Pakistan – floods of lies?

Monday blog

As this year’s monsoon hits Pakistan we have the totally predictable rain, floods, deaths and bleating from BBC journalists about ‘climate change’ making floods worse. So I thought it worth doing something the ludicrously-misnamed ‘BBC Verify’ never seems to do – look at the actual facts.

Three years ago, we were told that 2022’s floods were the ‘worst in history:

So, it seems that this year’s floods aren’t too bad in comparison to 2022 in spite of the fact that the BBC assures us that floods are becoming worse due to climate change.

A few hundred people have died in this year’s Pakistan floods. I have only managed to find data on the numbers of people killed in Pakistan in floods for the last 75 years:

• the flood of 1950, which killed 2,910 people
• on 1 July 1977 heavy rains and flooding in Karachi, killed 248 people, according to Pakistan meteorological department 207 millimetres (8.1 in) of rain fell in 24 hours.
• in 1992 flooding during the Monsoon season killed 1,834 people across the country,
• in 1993 flooding during Monsoon rains killed 3,084 people,
• in 2003 Sindh province was badly affected due to monsoon rains causing damages in billions, killed 178 people,
• in 2007 Cyclone Yemyin submerged lower part of Balochistan Province in sea water killing 380 people. Before that it killed 213 people in Karachi on its way to Balochistan.
• in 2010, almost all of Pakistan was affected when massive flooding, caused by record breaking rains, hit Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. At least 2,000 people died in the flood and almost 20 million people were affected by it
• In 2022, the country’s worst monsoon season on record killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40bn (£29.5bn) in damage.

The death toll from the current floods is estimated at just over 400 people. The couple of minutes research I did (see above) found five Pakistan floods – 1950, 1992, 1993, 2010 and 2022 – which killed more than that.

What about the population and the trees?

One issue BBC Verify and none of the climate catastrophists seem keen to mention is the massive scale of deforestation in Pakistan largely due to the country’s rapidly-expanding population. Trees are obviously important in countries which have seasons with heavy rainfall as they help absorb the rain and stabilise the land so the rain doesn’t result in landslides and floods.

The population of Pakistan is increasing at an astonishing rate:

At the time of the 2010 floods, which killed around 2,000 people, the population of Pakistan was about 180 million. By 2022, this had reached 230 million – a rise of 50 million in just 12 years.

Probably linked to the rise in population is the rate of deforestation. Just between 2013 and 2020 Pakistan’s tree coverage fell from 5.2% to 4.8%:

To put this into context, the world average in 2020 based on 193 countries is 32.2%. Pakistan comes in at 164 out of 193 countries in levels of tree cover. Pakistan’s neighbour, India, has 24.3% tree cover – almost six times as much as Pakistan. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Pakistan had the second fastest rate of deforestation in Asia (Afghanistan was worse). And the WWF recommends a country has around 35% forest cover. So, it’s hardly surprising that, with so little tree cover, when the monsoons hit Pakistan, the result is inevitably rushing torrents of water, floods and destruction of property and agricultural land.

Pakistan’s corrupt elites slavering over the money they can steal?

Pakistan has a large-scale tree planting initiative called the “10 Billion Tree Tsunami”. This project, launched in 2018, aims to plant ten billion trees across the country within five years. It’s an expansion of a previous project, the “Billion Tree Tsunami” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The initiative is part of Pakistan’s efforts to combat climate change and deforestation.

Strangely, in spite of these wonderful projects, no doubt paid for using foreign aid from countries including Britain, deforestation has continued. I wonder what happened to all the money donated to the tree-planting projects? Pakistan has for years been one of the largest recipients of UK foreign aid and is projected to pocket about £133m in 2024/25.

On Transparency International’s Corruption Index, Pakistan comes in at number 140 of 180 countries rated according to their levels of corruption – just above such earthly paradises as Zimbabwe, Eritrea and Uzbekistan.

So, a cynic might be tempted to wonder whether it’s not climate change but a massive increase in population and an alarming level of deforestation and corruption which have contributed to the amount of damage caused by Pakistan’s totally predictable monsoon rains. However, there is at least one certainty – these floods will provide yet another wonderful opportunity for Pakistan’s utterly corrupt elites to enrich themselves by looting the foreign aid that will pour into the country.