It’s hard to really imagine the disaster in Pakistan: two-thirds of the country is under water. And if you do some calculations, you come to the conclusion that the flooded area is the same size as the entire United Kingdom. At least 300,000 homes have been destroyed – another sentence whose scale hardly dawns on you: if only four people lived in each house (and there are many more) you are already talking about many more citizens than the entire city of Amsterdam counts. All fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, and children who were surprised by a river that suddenly brought down their house like a raging monster and now they have lost everything (really everything!).
The numbers continue. At least 1,100 dead, 33 million people affected (that is 1 in 7 Pakistanis) and it is estimated that at least 10 billion euros is needed for reconstruction. Difficult to understand. And also far away. Floods in Belgium and Germany come in harder than those in a country where you have never been on holiday and about which you only read stories full of misery and disaster.
Greatest Responsibility
It is understandable that not every Dutchman jumps up to take action for Pakistan. But the country is begging for this and can expect that help – certainly from the rich, western countries that bear the greatest responsibility for global warming. Pakistan has more glaciers than any other country (7,532) and they are melting faster and faster. This floods the high-lying ice lakes, which comes on top of all the extra rainwater that has fallen in recent years. Pakistani climate minister Sherry Rehman warned earlier this week that the ‘monster monsoon’ is not an isolated incident. The country is also struggling with heat waves (temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius are increasingly common) and forest fires. Pakistan is therefore at the forefront of climate change.
Now Pakistan can also look in the mirror, because the authorities have done very little to save the country from disaster. The maintenance of the dikes is abominable, while large amounts of forest have disappeared in recent decades, which in turn means that the soil is less able to retain water and contributes to the rise in temperature.
However, that should not be a reason for the rest of the world to abandon Pakistan to its fate. Western aid has hardly started yet, while the water is literally on people’s lips and the West is indeed partly responsible for it. António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, called for solidarity. Let’s heed that generously.
The position of the newspaper is expressed in the Volkskrant Commentaar. It is created after a discussion between the commentators and the editor-in-chief.