This episode covers the devastating floods that struck Pakistan past weeks, highlighting the country’s extreme vulnerability to climate change. The video begins by recounting the scale of the recent disaster, with thousands killed and millions displaced, and frames the situation as a profound crisis of justice for Pakistan due to limited global support and disproportionate suffering from emissions generated elsewhere. Host Herb introduces the panel, setting the stage for an in-depth exploration of why Pakistan is severely affected, the impacts on local communities, and possible actions to mitigate future crises.
Transcripts here for readers writers and researchers
WATCH: Climate Emergency Forum Sep 28 2025 Devastation in Pakistan - Inside the Monsoon Floods
Paul: Pakistan, people think, well, just the monsoons happen every year, 0:06 you know, but what they don't realize is that the monsoons are becoming much more 0:11 intensified because of climate change. It's a lot warmer world, a lot more water vapor 0:18 in the atmosphere. So the monsoons are greatly intensified and they're also shifting location. 0:26 [Music] 0:46 Herb: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Climate Emergency Forum. We're so happy you're 0:52 here with us. And today we'll be talking about, unfortunately, yet another disaster that has 0:57 struck a part of the world that has already seen more than its share of disasters, in this case, 1:03 flooding. And we're talking about the country of Pakistan. Pakistan, as we discussed in a previous 1:10 program, is already recognized as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate 1:16 change. Climate change keeps reminding us and keeps reminding the people of Pakistan that is the 1:22 case. In June, they had some of the worst flooding ever. More than a thousand people were killed, 1:29 over two million people displaced. And Pakistan's climate change minister not only talked about 1:37 the need for climate action, but he basically said that this was a crisis of justice for the 1:42 country. That because of the lack of support from the rest of the world and all the emissions coming 1:47 from the rest of the world, Pakistan is bearing the brunt of what is truly an unfathomable amount 1:54 of suffering throughout the country. And again, this is not the first time; it's happened many, 1:59 many times. So with that, we're going to explore why that's happening in Pakistan, 2:06 what some of the impacts have been, what some of the steps the country may be taking to deal with 2:11 it, and what we can all do to try to do our small share of avoiding or minimizing future 2:18 conflicts like that. I'm happy, as always, to introduce our first guest. He is not just a guest, 2:25 he is a regular and has been from the beginning, Paul Beckwith. Paul, as you know, is a climate 2:30 system scientist who lives in Ottawa and has taught at universities in the area. He hosts 2:36 an incredibly important and widespread YouTube channel with over 1200 videos. And as always, 2:43 Paul, I'm so happy you're here today. And the floor is yours. Give us your perspective 2:48 on Pakistan and what stands out for you. Paul: OK, so Pakistan, people think, well, 2:55 just the monsoons happen every year, you know, but what they don't realize is that the monsoons 3:01 are becoming much more intensified because of climate change. It's a lot warmer world, 3:08 a lot more water vapor in the atmosphere. So the monsoons are greatly intensified and they're also 3:15 shifting location. And we got an indication of that recently when these intense monsoons, 3:23 which typically are cloud based rainfall from altitude of about 1600 to 1700 meters. 3:34 The advection and the uplift was so strong that these winds and clouds and rainfall actually 3:40 made it up into the, across the Himalayan barrier recently and made it up into areas in Tibet, which 3:48 are at four or five thousand meters elevation. So the nature of the monsoon is changing. 3:55 We know that the other tropical phenomena like the Intertropical Convergence Zone, that thin 4:01 band of clouds and storms that circumvent the equator is changing. It's becoming more intense, 4:07 is becoming narrower and it's also shifting location. So the global circulation patterns, 4:14 both in the atmosphere and oceans, are changing. The oceans are a lot warmer and there's a lot 4:19 more evaporation, a lot more water vapor in the atmosphere, you know, one degree Celsius rise in 4:24 temperature, seven percent more water vapor in the air. So these monsoons are striking regions 4:31 and in an unprecedented fashion. So in Punjab, they had the biggest flood this year in their 4:38 history. The monsoons were 26.5 percent stronger from between July 1st and August 27th compared to 4:47 previous years. And the layout of Pakistan, there is tremendous amounts of agriculture. In fact, 4:56 people in Pakistan are employed about 50 to 55 percent of the working population works in 5:03 agriculture. There's canals and rivers throughout Pakistan. So in the low level floodplain areas, 5:11 the soils are most fertile and these are areas that get inundated because people are farmers. 5:18 There's lots of poverty in the region, but there's lots of small villages. So for this 5:24 year's flooding has displaced, I've seen different numbers, you know, four point seven million, 5:30 four point two million, seven million people affected. There were four point seven million 5:37 people across four thousand seven hundred villages that were affected. That's about a thousand people 5:43 per village. And as Peter mentioned, with 25 foot water level rises along some of the rivers, 5:51 completely inundated and submerged some of these villages completely. So there's 5:56 also mountainous terrain. And when you get the monsoon carrying up into the mountainous terrain, 6:04 then the torrential rains on the glaciers melt the glaciers very quickly and create flash floods 6:11 which go down through the valleys. They also load up the river system. So there's a lot of riverine 6:18 flooding as well. And there's a lot of very intense localized rainfall. So tremendous amounts 6:23 of rainfall in one localized area which can then, you know, that water collects in valleys, 6:30 et cetera, causing flash floods. Also lots of landslides. The rainfall this year started, 6:36 we had pre monsoon rains in June. So the monsoon normally runs from July through September. But 6:45 there were there was tremendous rainfall in June of this year, which sort of filled up a lot of 6:50 the reservoirs and water systems and saturated soils and so on. So then when the monsoons came, 6:56 they were much worse. There was nowhere for the water to go. Many earthen dikes were breached, 7:02 et cetera. There's also the added complication of India because there was intense rainfall in many 7:10 parts of India in the Indian Punjab, and that caused their rivers to all overflow. So they 7:16 released excess water which crossed into Pakistan. They actually cautioned and warned Pakistan the 7:23 water is coming and released it. They had nowhere to keep it. So that added to the problem. And of 7:28 course, with the conflict between and tension between India and Pakistan, that adds to the 7:34 issues. So the reservoirs basically were all, are all basically near capacity, both in Pakistan 7:42 and India. So any additional rainfall leads to tremendous flooding and water release. When you 7:51 get the rivers rising 25 feet, you don't just get the communities inundated and the lowlands, the 7:58 river plains inundating, wiping out agriculture and cattle, et cetera. But you also get roads 8:06 destroyed, bridges swept away. So it really limits transportation from one side of the river to the 8:13 other. So all of these things are adding to the problem. Also, government policies have been a 8:19 bit lax. There's been a lot of illegal hotels and resorts and encroachments along various rivers, 8:27 particularly on the Swat River. Then when the floods come, all of that stuff is destroyed. And 8:34 then once the water levels go down, your problem is not finished, right? Not only do you have to 8:39 repair all the infrastructure that was damaged, but you get all these waterborne diseases like 8:45 malaria and dengue fever hit and then water supplies are contaminated even more. I mean, 8:52 the water is drinking water is not great. Lots of people can't drink from the taps. They have 8:57 to get bottled water and the water gets a lot worse if flooding puts a lot of sewage, 9:03 et cetera, in the water system and you get cholera outbreaks weeks later. 9:08 And also the glacial lakes that are up at high levels, they overflow the dams, the rudimentary 9:17 dams holding the water back. They get overtopped and then it erodes away the whole dam. And you can 9:23 get these glacial outbursts, floods, which also contribute to the problem. And then you get food 9:30 price spikes because their wheat is a huge crop and wheat prices actually went up 25 percent the 9:36 first week of September just a few weeks ago as the harvest was wiped out. So all these problems 9:42 sort of combined to create a huge problem there. Herb: Thanks, Paul. That was really important 9:47 points that you're making. And I want to ask Peter Carter, our second regular, 9:52 Dr. Peter Carter, retired medical doctor from British Columbia, who is the head of the Climate 9:58 Emergency Institute, which he started and has been an expert reviewer for the IPCC. 10:04 Please give us a sense of how this fits in. How does the flooding in Pakistan fit into 10:10 the larger perspective of the climate crisis and indeed the climate emergency? Thank you, Peter. 10:17 Peter: So I've been trying to keep up as best I can to these horrendous floods affecting Pakistan 10:25 again. I decided to do a little bit of a check on Pakistan's economy and it's quite surprising. 10:32 It's a natural resource rich country, although the agriculture of course is all done by sort 10:40 of manual labor and small farms and villages. But it has a very, very large wheat crop. It produces 10:46 a lot of wheat, the same amount of wheat as all of Africa and more of all of South America, according 10:54 to what I read here. So Pakistan is a net food exporter, of course, cotton, but the cotton 11:01 production is probably going to be badly affected by these floods. I read Pakistan has a big debt to 11:09 GDP ratio up to about 80 percent. I also read that there's like 30 percent inflation in the country. 11:16 So that's pretty terrible. Pakistan does actually have some fossil fuel resources, a number of coal 11:22 mines, some oil and some gas. So the science then of what's been happening to Pakistan recurrently, 11:33 the very worst floods were the floods in 2022, only a few years ago. And then they had that huge 11:40 flood in 2010. So we're talking about the Asian monsoon because the Pakistan monsoon was much, 11:49 much heavier than normal and this is what produced the floods. The monsoon affects a large area of 11:55 South and East Asia, that's half of the world's population. So what's going to be happening to 12:02 the monsoons is absolutely crucial to a very large percentage of the world's population. 12:09 I have been following the science on monsoons and it is totally agreed that the monsoons in 12:16 Pakistan and adjacent India, they are going to become heavier. And clearly, of course, 12:21 there is some evidence that they've become heavier already. And so all the models, amazingly, 12:28 all the models agreed on that. The floods, the monsoons are going to get progressively more heavy 12:34 as the global surface warming increases. So that's a huge change for these people because their whole 12:42 economy and their agriculture in particular has been adapted, fits with the regularity of the 12:48 monsoons. So the monsoons have been a friend to them. Now the monsoons are turning out to be not 12:55 a friend to them. It's very heavy pre-monsoon rains in June and the floods continuing right 13:03 up to the present time, continuing through to the whole monsoon period into September. 13:11 At least 80 of the country's 160 districts have been categorized by the government as calamity 13:20 hit floods. Huge proportion of the country again. There's been a quick attribution study done and 13:28 the rainfall was at least made 10 to 15 percent heavier because of climate change. 13:34 That may sound like a small amount, but when we're talking about huge amounts of rainfall, 13:40 that would make all the difference in the world to those people. The Sindh province and the Punjab 13:47 were hit worse than anywhere else. However, the aid organization, NGOs on the spot. They say that 13:55 you've got to really say that all of Pakistan has been affected by this flooding. In Sindh they had 14:02 700 percent higher than monthly rainfall average, seven hundred percent higher, seven times higher. 14:11 We've had good satellite images from NASA showing a lot of this particular province being taken over 14:18 by a huge inland lake. The floods in the Punjab have washed away thousands of villages and farms. 14:26 So we're looking at a repeat of 2022 and 2010 here. I want to just repeat that. Heavy monsoons 14:33 and flash floods with the monsoons has killed over 700 people. Four million people have been 14:41 impacted by the floods. These are all Pakistan government figures, of course. 1.8 million people 14:48 have been displaced. More than 12,000 homes have been damaged and a lot of them leveled. 14:56 I read from one of their meteorologists that they were seeing water levels up to 25 feet. 15:05 So it's hard for me to imagine that, but he said that this is absolutely devastating. You can't do 15:11 anything about that. Again, they lost a lot of livestock, 6,500 heavier livestock were lost in 15:18 addition to widespread destruction of crops. The GEOGLAM satellite, they had a look at Pakistan, 15:28 GEOGLAM is absolutely fantastic, high definition satellite. At least 200,000 hectares of rice 15:35 fields have been flooded between August and September. The cotton shortfall that they're going 15:41 to have will ripple through their textile sector, which is of course a major industry in Pakistan. 15:48 I was very pleased to see that there's been a rapid response in aid from the United States 15:54 government. That's really good, really nice. I just want to mention the 2022 monsoon floods, 16:00 which was the worst. That killed 1,700 people, put a third of the country underwater. More than 16:09 33 million people were impacted, 22 just a few years ago. An estimated 8 million people were 16:18 displaced in the 2022 floods. Economic damages were put at 16 billion dollars for recovery and 16:28 reconstruction. So finally for me to mention the 2010 floods, I mean I remember those very well. 16:35 The images of the floods taken, aerial images, absolutely devastating floods, began in July 16:42 again following an unusually heavy pre-monsoon and monsoon. In 2010, 2,000 people were killed, 16:51 over 1.7 million houses were destroyed in 2010. I mean most of Pakistan in the agricultural 17:01 villages, you know, they don't have tremendously strong, strongly constructed houses. In 2010, 17:09 18 million people were seriously affected. And at the worst of 2010, 20% of Pakistan's total 17:19 area was underwater. That would only impact 10 billion dollars in 2010. I have one final point 17:29 to make if I have time, and that is that there's a bit of a complicated story on the aid that gets 17:36 to Pakistan. We hear that this government is doing this and this government is doing 17:41 that. In actual fact, they turn out not to be aid, they're basically loans. And so these floods are 17:49 putting Pakistan's economy into a worse and worse situation with regards to the debt it carries. 17:57 Paul: So I want to talk a little bit about what I guess some people call the crisis of justice, 18:04 which Peter is talking about. I mean the people that are suffering from the ravages of climate 18:10 change, the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change aren't the countries that are 18:14 producing most of the emissions. So we did a video not too long ago about what countries are most 18:20 vulnerable to climate change and Pakistan's right up there. It's in the top 10. And I mentioned also 18:28 that the, you know, the conflict, the continuing conflict with India and the border skirmishes, 18:36 etc., you know, they play a big role in keeping lots of Pakistan impoverished. I mean, 18:43 their population is 247.5 million compared to India's 1.43 billion. And yet they feel 18:52 they have to spend an awful lot of money on defence in order to counter the threats that 18:59 they see from India. And India, you know, spends a lot on defence to counter the threats they see 19:05 from both Pakistan and China. In fact, the Global Firepower 2025 report ranks India as number four, 19:16 having the fourth strongest military in the world, and Pakistan number 12. Now for Pakistan's size 19:24 and poverty level, this is very disproportionate. They're spending a lot of money on this when it 19:30 could be going towards making them more resilient, but they feel they have no choice. I should 19:36 mention, you know, since we can blame the British, since the British rule ended in 1947, right, 19:42 India, the Indian subcontinent was divided into a Muslim majority Pakistan and a Hindu majority 19:50 India. Since then, they've gone to war four times. The most recent skirmish was precipitated by a 19:58 massacre of tourists in Indian Kashmir on April 22nd, and that led to India attacking Pakistan, 20:07 firing missiles at six different sites in early May. And it precipitated, you know, what could 20:14 have extended into a major conflict. India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers. They both have 20:22 about 170 nuclear warheads each. Pakistanans are focused on tactical battlefield nukes. So 20:30 they're both nuclear powers. You don't want them to skirmish. So climate is a compounding factor. 20:36 These floods are a compounding factor that add on to all of the additional stresses. Poverty is 20:44 huge in Pakistan. You know, I mentioned 50 to 55 percent of the people are employed in farming. And 20:51 when you get, you know, there's canals throughout the country, there's rivers. They get a lot of 20:57 water also from rainfall for farming, but a lot of it is stored water from canals and reservoirs and 21:02 things. And when these are all interrupted and their livelihoods are all interrupted, 21:07 it adds to a lot of stress in the region, which and there's also, you know, treaties between 21:12 Pakistan and India on water partitioning. And those things are very based on flimsy grounds 21:19 when there's so much other conflict between the two countries. So it's a huge issue. And you know, 21:24 when people think, well, OK, they each have 170 nukes, if those if those nukes went off, 21:30 that would basically cause a global catastrophe because it would cause, you know, a nuclear winter 21:36 type scenario that that's enough firepower to cause a nuclear winter which would wipe out 21:43 vast parts of the global food supply. So it's not just a regional thing. It would quickly spread to 21:49 global issues. So the world needs to figure out how to assist these countries in dealing with the 21:56 ravages of abrupt climate change. And you know, the monsoon is strengthening and shifting and it's 22:03 causing all kinds of problems in that region. Peter: So what's been interesting and highly 22:10 significant to me is the science on the monsoons. Now for many years, going back to the fourth 22:19 assessment in 2007, the models were projecting increases in precipitation over Pakistan and 22:28 regional India. But the models did not agree on which way the monsoons were going to go. So it 22:36 took many years for us to be informed on that. And that changed, I think, by a 2017 paper. And that's 22:46 the paper that showed this remarkable consensus among the climate models then, indicating a 22:53 robust increase in the East Asian summer monsoon and increased precipitation, higher frequency as 23:02 well being projected. And of course, the models are now projecting increased intensity of monsoon 23:10 related water extremes. We have known for some years now that Pakistan was highly vulnerable 23:22 to its monsoons and you can't change the monsoons really, right? So I have to go back to the fact 23:32 that all of the papers that I looked at, they had recommendations on adaptation. Not one paper had 23:40 anything on emissions. Not one paper had anything on doing something about emissions to help the 23:47 plight of these now highly vulnerable countries. And to my mind, that's pretty bad because what is 23:56 climate change all about? Well, climate change has been all about irreversible impacts increasingly 24:02 happening, starting with and heaviest with the most climate vulnerable countries. But of course, 24:09 we're all climate vulnerable now, that's very clear. So we need a lot more talk being put 24:15 out there on the urgency for mitigation, the urgency to put emissions into decline, 24:23 six assessments said by this year 2025 at the latest. I'm afraid I have to say this is not 24:31 coming out of the scientific community. I only know of a couple of papers, to be honest with you, 24:37 who have said in their recommendations, you know, they make conclusion recommendations, who said in 24:42 their recommendations that mitigation has to be treated in an urgent manner. So that's sort of 24:50 that's my overview of the science on this. Herb: I am recording this actually today from 24:56 a place very close to New York City where I'm attending the New York Climate Week. And even 25:01 though our federal government is doing all it can to downplay and dismiss and deny climate change, 25:08 I want folks to know if they don't already that there are more people here for climate week than 25:12 ever before, over 1000 events, several which I've had the opportunity to attend. So don't lose hope. 25:20 There's still enormous interest and participation in climate action at every scale and at every 25:26 level. So what I'd like to do is present a little bit of news since our last program, 25:33 a small sampling of some of the headlines from around the world on the climate crisis. And 25:38 let me start by saying that most of us are very interested in Olympic sports. And yet 25:45 the global calendar of Olympic sports may need to be literally re-engineered. It was 25:51 announced amid challenges posed by climate change after the athletes biggest stars had to contend 25:57 with soaring and searing temperatures in Tokyo. The world athletics president, Sebastian Coe says, 26:05 one wonders given how many people, how many billions of people follow and love sports 26:10 and the Olympics, whether the disruption of the Olympics, which happens more and more, will lead 26:15 to more aggressive climate action. Time will tell. In perhaps predictable but not very happy news, 26:23 the president of the United States, Donald Trump, at the UN opening in New York this week, 26:29 as I mentioned earlier, gave a major speech and he called climate change the, quote, greatest con job 26:36 ever perpetrated on the world. And some of you may have heard this phrase that I always use when I 26:44 evaluate what our president says, president of my country, and that is that every acquisition, every 26:51 accusation is actually a confession. So I'll let you think about that, the audience. Another thing 26:58 I wanted to mention is that the more and more it's the Chinese that are sort of in the driver's seat 27:06 in terms of climate action and climate emissions because of their scale and their industrialization 27:12 and basically they are preparing a nationally determined contribution for what they intend to 27:18 do by 2035. And as of the date of the recording, it has not yet been announced, but I think we 27:24 should all pay attention to that because the aggressiveness with which they commit themselves 27:30 will have a lot to do with how life will occur throughout the planet, not just in China in the 27:36 years to come. Back to the neighboring country of Pakistan, the drying of the Ganga River of great 27:44 economic and cultural importance to millions of people has been found in a scientific study to be 27:50 unprecedented in the last 1300 years, 1300 years, and of course, tens of millions if not hundreds 27:59 of millions of people depend upon the rivers like that in India. The last thing I wanted to say is 28:06 that something, a term I hadn't heard before, river heat waves, which are deadly to aquatic 28:12 ecosystems are increasing in severity faster than the heat waves of the air in the United States. 28:19 So when it's hot, let's not just forget, it's not just hot in the air, but it's hot in the water 28:25 around us with all kinds of adverse consequences. So those are a few of the latest news bulletins. 28:32 Thanks so much to both Paul and Peter for bringing up these really critical points that Pakistan is 28:39 suffering immensely, the people are, the country doesn't have the resources, the world needs to be 28:45 supportive of not just Pakistan, but also other countries like that. If you like this channel, 28:50 please like it, subscribe to our channel, tell your friends and your colleagues about it, 28:55 go to our website, climateemergencyforum.org, we've got some great articles, and we also happen 29:01 to have a button that says donate, and we could use your donations, we're a frugal organization, 29:08 but like everyone and every organization, we need some funds to continue to provide what is 29:14 now well in excess of 200 videos on every aspect of the climate emergency. So with that, we thank 29:21 you for coming, tell us your ideas for programs for the future, and we will see you soon. Bye.
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Herb Simmens - Author, Co-founder of the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC), Climate Emergency Board Member and former college instructor.
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