The Pakistan Minister of Climate said that the country facing the “injustice crisis” because more deadly floods and extreme meteorological events have struck the country.
The Minister of Climate Change of Pakistan criticized the “crisis of injustice” against the country and an “unbalanced allocation” of funding as heavy rains and the last sudden floods cause more damage, destruction and losses.
Pakistan officials said that at least 32 people had been killed in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces since the monsoon season.
Last month, at least 32 people were also killed in serious storms in a country that reported extreme weather events in the spring, including strong hailstorms.
The report on the climate rate index in 2025 placed Pakistan at the top of the list of the most affected countries on the basis of the 2022 data. Then, in -depth floods submerged around a third of the country, affecting 33 million people – including killing more than 1,700, and caused damages of $ 14.8 billion, as well as 15.2 billion Dollars of economic losses.
Last year, more floods affected thousands of people and a heat wave killed nearly 600 people.
“I do not consider this as a climate crisis. I consider this as a crisis and this unbalanced allowance we are talking about,” the Minister of Climate Change of Pakistan, Musadiq Malik told Al Jazeera. “This unbalanced allocation of green financing, I do not consider it as a financing gap. I consider it a moral gap. ”
Lack of funding
Earlier this year, a former chief of the country’s central bank said that Pakistan needed an annual investment of 40 to 50 billion dollars until 2050 to meet its imminent climate change challenges despite being responsible for about half a cent of the world’s CO2 emissions.
In January 2023, commitments worth around $ 10 billion in multilateral financial institutions and countries were reported. The following year, Pakistan received $ 2.8 billion in international creditors against these promises.
Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund said Pakistan will receive $ 1.3 billion as part of a new climate resilience loan program, which will extend over 28 months. But Malik said these commitments and loans were not sufficient given the situation in which Pakistan is.
“Two countries of the world [China and United States of America] Produce 45% of carbon emissions. The fact that the 10 main countries in the world represent almost 70% of the carbon load is also something that people are aware. But 85% of the green financing in the world goes in the same 10 countries, while the rest of the world – some 180 countries – obtains green funding from 10 to 15%.
“We pay for this thanks to these erratic climate change, floods, devastation of agriculture.”
According to a study carried out last year by the Ministry of Climate Change and the Italian Research Institute EVK2CNR, Pakistan is home to 13,000 and more glaciers.
However, the gradual increase in temperatures also obliges the fusion of these glaciers, increasing the risk of flooding, infrastructure damage, loss of lives and land, threat to communities and water rarity.
“In addition to earth and life, floods [due to glacier melt] swept away thousands of years of civilization [in Sindh province]. Mosques, temples, schools, hospitals, old buildings, monuments, everything was swept away.
“Add to that loss of education and access to health care, drinking water, water -borne diseases, lack of access to hospitals and clinics and infant mortality,” said the report.
Last month, Amnesty International said in a report that “health systems and response to Pakistan disasters did not meet the needs of children and the elderly who are most at risk of death and illness in the middle of extreme meteorological events linked to climate change”.
“Children and the elderly in Pakistan suffer on the front line from the climate crisis, exposed to extreme heat or to floods that lead to disproportionate levels of death and illness,” said Laura Mills, researcher in the response to the Amnesty International crisis.
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
