Iqbal Solangi, a resident of Karachi, is in his small home as a new wave of cloudbursts, monsoon rains, and floods wreak havoc across Pakistan. He is grieving for those who lost their loved ones, their homes, and their livestock.
More than 800 people have died as a result of a heavier-than-usual monsoon that followed floods and landslides, damaged at least 7,225 homes, washed away more than 5,500 livestock, and caused the country’s widespread crop destruction.
Although it is still unknown what caused the floods, climate change, and other factors may have played a role in the deluge. Pakistan, one of the top 10 most vulnerable countries for climate change, contributes less than 1% of global emissions, but it is one of the top 10 most vulnerable countries.
After the 2010 and 2012 floods, Solangi had already left farming and had already put an end to his climate-change-forced exile in 2022. He had also experienced another major debt loss, this time due to the flooding.
Due to climate change, his forefathers’ jobs had become unsustainable, so he relocated to Karachi in 2012. He had already moved from a small village on the border of Sindh and Balochistan provinces. Three decades of farming were abruptly put to an end by the displacement.
When I was sitting in a high chair and watching the water go away, I decided I would never go back, Solangi said of the 2022 floods, which had impacted 33 million people and flooded 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of agricultural land.
According to data from 2022, Pakistan ranked first among the countries on the list of the most affected according to the Climate Rate Index report from 2025. More than 1, 700 people were killed by extensive flooding in the following region of the nation: 9 million people were in poverty, caused $ 14. 8 billion in economic losses, and caused $ 15. 2 billion in damage.
The monsoon has changed from a source of beauty and renewal to a source of chaos and despair, according to an article in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper in August. What was once filled with joy now fills the void.”
More than 600 people died as a result of a heatwave and thousands of more floods were affected by the heatwave last year. The over 13 000 plus glaciers in Pakistan are being forced to melt due to the country’s rising temperatures, which raises the risk of flooding, property loss, damage to infrastructure, loss of life, and water shortage.
According to Pakistan’s Bureau of Statistics (PBS), agriculture still accounts for roughly 24 percent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP). Agriculture, which makes up more than 37 percent of the workforce, provides 40 million people with a means of earning a living.
The Pakistani minister of climate change warned that the melting of the glaciers would have “catastrophic consequences for Pakistan’s agricultural economy” in an interview with Al Jazeera earlier this year.
If these gushing floods wash away our infrastructure and wreak havoc on agricultural lands, the government lacks the resources to provide for such a large portion of the population because they work in agriculture. The potential for destruction is enormous, according to Musadiq Malik, both economically and agriculturally.
Agriculture’s sector posted a modest 0.6 percent growth rate this year, which is significantly below the target 2 percent and significantly below the 6.4% growth rate that was previously announced.
Between 1950 and 2012, according to a recent study published in the Nature journal, the Indus Plain in Pakistan experienced 19 flood disasters that affected an area of almost 600,000 square kilometers (231, 661.3 miles), resulting in 11, 239 fatalities, and causing more than $ 39 billion in economic damage. After 2000, all of those things happened.
PBS’s shared data shows a rise in farmland numbers in Pakistan over the past few years, from 8.6 million in 2010 to 11.7 million last year, with an exception of Punjab, which is increasing across all provinces. Farmers have been greatly impacted by changes in the rain patterns, though.
Basharat Jamal still cultivates his land in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but he claims that droughts have nearly eliminated his crop over the past ten years.
Jamal, who earns a small sum of money as a supplement to his income, claims that the area has been put in double jeopardy as a result of the shift from farming practices. Many farmers are moving to urban centers to find work because their income and output have drastically decreased. Additionally, some farmers now own livestock, which eat away at their unprotected crops due to lack of fodder.
Major crops like wheat and cotton, which are now considered to be in decline, decreased by 13.5 percent, limiting the overall GDP growth rate by 0.6%, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2024-25.
Farming is now equivalent to “gambling with nature.”
Farmers in Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, say farming in an unpredictable climate is “like gambling with nature” as a result of the frequent floods and droughts that have forced him to cross several states.
Despite “watching helplessly our crops wither and fail year after year,” he has continued to farm.
We had no choice but to leave our ancestral homeland and cross the world in search of survival ten years ago, Hashim said. Then, in 2022, the devastating floods struck. Everything that we rebuilt was left standing. Our fields once more were destroyed. We relocated once more the following year. We briefly found some tranquility.
On my farm and in a shop, I worked. Our kids returned to school, and things started to feel normal.
Farmers who abandoned their land and moved to cities as a result of the 2022 floods, according to the Migration Policy Institute, were among the more than 8 million people who were displaced by the floods.
In a report on the 2022 floods, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) stated that Pakistan will face “a crucial, trying year,” with growing macroeconomic and fiscal concerns, a cost-of-living crisis affecting the most vulnerable, and cataclysmic floods whose threats were multiplied by climate change.
However, he was forced to relocate soon after the drought, but he quickly resigned.
He said, “My farming days would be over one year when there are floods and drought,” adding that if this pattern continued.
Source: Aljazeera
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