July and August typically bring high levels of rainfall across the country, and while flooding isn’t uncommon, the extent and severity could be readily predicted.

These patterns have now changed. In 2022, extreme rainfall swept through Pakistan and huge swathes of the country were under water. Sindh province experienced levels of rain 508% above average for the time of year. 

Extreme weather in Pakistan is becoming the norm. The past 15 years have brought widespread flooding, loss of life and billions in financial costs. A post-disaster report, produced by the Pakistan Government, stated that the 2022 floods were “a wake-up call for systemic changes to address the underlying vulnerabilities to natural hazards”, citing the country’s lack of climate-resilient infrastructure. 

But heavy rainfall is only one of the water-related issues that Pakistan faces. In a country with huge geographical diversity, from sweltering deserts to freezing mountain tops, the water stresses are equally as varied. In many regions the key concern is a lack of reliable, clean water that can be used to grow crops and feed families.

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The risks of the Indus

The Indus River plays a critical role in Pakistan. This major artery travels almost the entire length of the country, an estimated 2,000 km, from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea. It is a crucial economic lever, supporting nearly 90% of Pakistan’s food production and 25% of its overall GDP. What happens to this river – both human and natural impacts – has huge consequences for the rest of the country.

The government and civil society agree that urgent action is required to protect Pakistan’s fragile water resources. A new adaptation project – SAFER Pakistan – is seeking to address these concerns with solutions that can be used to solve similar climate-related issues elsewhere.

The US$10 million project is led by ICIMOD, an intergovernmental research centre, alongside UNICEF, and financed by the Adaptation Fund. The intention is to tackle six key issues that people face in the Indus Basin: cryosphere risks, drying springs, groundwater, pollution, unsustainable water use, and community resilience.

In practice this means exploring different solutions that put communities in control of their own adaptive capacity. One solution under development is the use of community early warning systems.

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A warning sign

According to researchers, early warning systems “aim to empower affected communities against hazards and help them to sufficiently prepare before disasters strike.” 

The northern provinces of Pakistan – Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – are the main focus for testing these systems. In this mountainous region the Indus is fed by thousands of glaciers which sustain water flow during the dry season. At the same time, increased temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns are changing how these glaciers behave, leading to avalanches, increased snowmelt, and landslides.

As glaciers start to melt due to climate change, they can form large lakes high up on the mountain that can pose a serious threat to the communities living below. When these natural dams fail, huge quantities of water come careening down the mountain, a phenomenon called glacial lake outburst flood.

The SAFER project is exploring how to use local knowledge and observations of the mountain to ensure people know how and when to evacuate when these outbursts occur. This human intelligence will be combined with data from remote sensors to save lives and livelihoods. In total, over 435,000 people will be impacted by the project.

“Early warning systems often serve as the backbone of a multi-faceted response to reduce climate disaster risk,” commented Mikko Ollikainen, head of the Adaptation Fund. “But local information is often just as valuable as the real-time data you receive from sensors or satellites,” he added.

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Shaping an effective response

Community early warning systems – together with other preventive adaptation measures – are proving a popular solution to extreme weather events. 

A separate adaptation project in the mountains of Central Asia is grappling with the same problem of glacial flooding. In this case, with US$6.5 million in funding from the Adaptation Fund, UNESCO has been implementing early warning systems across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for the past five years, with considerable success.

Diana Aripkhanova, a project officer at UNESCO, and based in Kazakhstan, told Climate Home that glacier lake outburst floods “represent an increasing climate-related hazard across the high mountain regions of Central Asia”.

“These events can trigger destructive floods and debris flows that affect downstream communities, infrastructure, and livelihoods,” she added.

The project utilises real-time data drawn from weather monitoring stations with community preparedness to shape a fast and effective response to life-threatening flooding. This includes training people on evacuation routes, safe locations and simulation drills. In addition, the project has tried preventative measures such as planting hundreds of trees in valleys prone to landslides to provide greater stabilisation.

In total, four early warning systems have been installed across the four countries involved in the project covering seven high-risk areas. As a result, UNESCO estimates these systems are protecting over 100,000 people.

“Early warning systems are a key risk reduction measure, allowing communities to evacuate in time and reduce potential loss of life and damage to assets,” added Aripkhanova.

Community participation

The active role of each community is built into these interventions. Ensuring local people are core contributors is seen as crucial to building long-term climate resilience.

These communities are witnessing the threats from climate change materialise on a yearly basis, and researchers are now tapping into that understanding when implementing adaptation projects. 

After the 2022 floods, Pakistan’s development minister, Ahsan Iqbal, wrote that “there is an opportunity to do things differently” and that “enhancing Pakistan’s resilience to shocks and stresses amidst climate change, especially for the poorest…is essential for the country’s future.”

The climate shocks remain as strong as ever, but using the right tools and simple solutions can soften the blow when they occur.

Adam Wentworth is a freelancer writer based in Brighton, UK

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Research from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) found that between 2000 and 2019, there were almost twice as many climate-related disasters as during the previous 20 years. The number of major floods, for example, doubled from 1,389 to 3,254. These disasters are being fuelled by the world’s toxic love affair with carbon.

There was a time in which people discussed what the impacts of climate change might be on our children or grandchildren. It is clear that the pace of change is happening right here and now. As the planet continues to warm we have to accept that an increased number of climate-related disasters is inevitable, despite what progress is made between now and 2050.

Tried and tested

But accepting their occurrence doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. There exists a tried and tested approach to tackling the growth in climate disasters. One of the main solutions is to set up an effective early warning system (EWS). This simple concept has proven so popular that the UN has set a target for every person on the planet to be covered by an EWS by 2027.  “The evidence is clear: early warning systems are one of the most effective risk reduction and climate adaptation measures to reduce disaster mortality and economic losses,” the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, recently commented.

The Adaptation Fund was created to support communities against the impacts of climate change. Disaster risk reduction coupled with early warning systems now account for around 18% of all the projects it funds. To date it has helped install 526 early warning systems across all continents, at the local, national and regional levels.

Mikko Ollikainen, who heads up the fund, recently commented that  “many of our projects are helping to reduce and avert further loss and damage,” adding that “the fund is committed to supporting developing countries to build resilience to climate disasters. With the global urgency for adaptation expressed in recent international reports, such as the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report, we must accelerate and scale up our collective adaptation activities, including DRR/EWS. We have seen several instances where Adaptation Fund projects were successfully scaled up to create transformational DRR/EWS systems in countries.”

On the ground

Among the many projects which are now building out early warning systems, one in Colombia stands out. This small-scale, innovative example shows the benefits of a tailored approach working closely with local people. The La Mojana region in northern Colombia is an area of around 500,000 hectares, rich in wetlands and biodiversity. But it is also incredibly vulnerable to climate impacts and has frequently experienced bouts of severe flooding and drought.

Funded by the Adaptation Fund and carried out by the UN Development Programme together with the Colombian government, the project aimed to protect and strengthen local communities to future climate impacts. It managed to achieve this, in part, through creating stronger flood infrastructure, restoring damaged wetland areas, and the creation of an early warning system. A hydro-meteorological forecast and alert centre was created to monitor water levels, map flood threats, and provide safe evacuation routes. This provided 100% coverage for thousands of people in the affected regions, up from zero a few years earlier.

Heed the lessons

Juana Madariaga, a restoration expert, told UNDP that: “We learned about everything. We received a lot of training and finally we were able to move this project forward…now we are supporting other communities in doing the same thing.” The success has been taken forward by the Green Climate Fund which has greatly scaled up the funding and coverage of the EWS to the wider region.

A recent study by AF concluded that the most successful disaster risk reduction projects shared many of the same characteristics. These include leading with the community, empowering women and indigenous groups to design the campaign, and ensuring strong involvement from regional and national institutions. In addition, strong investment in data collection and improving data quality is essential to ensuring long-term sustainability and effectiveness.

These ideas may seem straightforward on paper but each region is unique. When it comes to disaster risk the value comes through forming lasting partnerships, a willingness to learn, and an understanding of local concerns. If the number of climate disasters only continues to grow as expected, we will need to heed these lessons and fast. Because if we cannot prevent disasters from happening, we have to learn to adapt, build resilience and reduce climate change risks.

This post was sponsored by the Adaptation Fund. See our supporters page for what this means.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

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