Helping and learning from Pakistan

[PLEASE do not just skim this post and then move on to the next thing competing for your time. I normally don't beg for eyeballs, but I'm going to do that, and more, this time, because of the severity of the situation in Pakistan.]

It’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of the tragedy that’s still unfolding in Pakistan.

Some excerpts from just two of the dozens of articles on the Pakistan floods…

Pakistan floods are a ‘slow-motion tsunami’ – Ban Ki-moon (emphasis added):

The United Nations general secretary, Ban Ki-moon, has appealed for swifter aid to provide immediate relief in food, shelter and clean water for the millions affected by the worst monsoon rains on record.

“Make no mistake, this is a global disaster,” Ban told a hurriedly convened session of the UN general assembly. “Pakistan is facing a slow-motion tsunami. Its destructive powers will accumulate and grow with time,” he warned.

Weather forecasts have said there could be four more weeks of rain, which will add to the flood problems.

The UN has appealed for $460m (£295m) in aid and donors have so far given about half that figure. But the secretary-general said all of the money was needed immediately to help victims over the next three months.

…

But tonight Mitchell, who has recently visited Pakistan to inspect the effect British aid has had so far, told the UN general assembly in New York that the international community had to do more. He told the UN it was “deeply depressing” that the international community was “only now waking up to the true scale of this disaster”.

Flood Disaster May Require Largest Aid Effort in Modern History:

One of the largest humanitarian relief efforts ever attempted is now mobilizing to help Pakistan cope with what its government and U.N. agencies are calling the worst natural disaster in modern memory.

The death toll is much smaller than in past disasters: About 1,600 are believed dead so far. But experts say initial assessments show the scale of damage and human suffering left by torrential monsoon rains over the past three weeks dwarfs the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 2005 Kashmir earthquake, 2008 Cyclone Nargis disaster in Burma, and Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti — combined.

“What we face in Pakistan today is a natural calamity of unprecedented proportions,” Pakistan’s foreign minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said during a special U.N. session to address the crisis, held here yesterday. “These are the worst monsoon floods in living memory.”

Debate is heating up over what caused the catastrophe, with experts pointing to deforestation, intensive land-use practices or mismanagement of the Indus River as possible causes. But top U.N. and Pakistani government officials are now clearly pointing to climate change as the principal culprit.

“Climate change, with all its severity and unpredictability, has become a reality for 170 million Pakistanis,” said Qureshi in his appeal for aid. “The present situation in Pakistan reconfirms our extreme vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change.”

…

Officials say about 800,000 to 900,000 homes have been destroyed or made unlivable. The government believes 4.6 million have been left homeless in just two provinces, Punjab and Sindh.

Areas in the country’s north and northwest have been hardest hit, especially Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where several communities have been cut off from the outside world after floodwaters washed out key bridges. About 70 percent of bridges and roads have been destroyed here, officials report. Pakistan’s government says little transportation infrastructure remains in the Swat valley, the scene of intense fighting between the army and Islamic insurgents in 2009.

Pakistan’s agricultural economy, the source of income for about 70 percent of the population, has borne the brunt of the damage. “This is where we have been hit the most,” said Qureshi.

More than 17 million acres of farmland was inundated, Qureshi said. U.N. officials figure that more than 200,000 head of livestock have been killed in the flooding. And the nation’s cotton crop, an important source of export earnings, has largely been wiped out after 1 million acres of the crop was lost to floods in Punjab.

The flood disaster could also exacerbate global food prices, in particular wheat. The government of Pakistan says the season’s harvest is pretty much gone and 1 million metric tons of wheat that was sitting in storage is now gone. Droughts in Russia, Australia and Canada had already sent wheat prices soaring in recent weeks.

What can you do if you live in the US or Canada or Europe or Japan or any of the other developed countries comfortably detached from the tragedy in Pakistan? Simple: Give money to a worthy relief effort.

My wife and I have always been fans of the American Red Cross, thanks in no small part to the help we saw them give so many people during the 1972 floods that Pennsylvania, among other areas in the NE US. So, we are contributing through their web site. You can also give through the International Committee of the Red Cross. Their article on the Pakistan flooding is here, and there’s a contribution link at the top of that page.

Americans can check the US State Department’s page for contributions, which has two of those “text to contribute” numbers, plus links to several relief organizations.

So don’t just sit there and feel bad about the Pakistan floods for 10 seconds and then go watch YouTube videos or play some brain cell killing game on facebook. Instead, take a couple of minutes and do something that will materially help human beings who are already in dire need and will likely be in even worse shape in the coming months. No one can demand that you get on a plane and fly thousands of miles to Pakistan to help distribute food and medical supplies, but I can demand this of you. If it helps get you over the hump, imagine that for this week this site isn’t free — you have to make a contribution of whatever amount you can afford. Yes, you’re on the honor system here, but I sincerely hope that at least some of you will seize the opportunity to do some good.

I mentioned in the title of this post that we can learn from Pakistan, too. What’s there to learn?

First, you’ll learn something about yourself after you respond (or fail to respond) to my plea for contributions.

Second, look at the world as we know it in August 2010, and think about where we, as in all of us, are headed in the coming decades. You can argue until your voice cracks or your fingers bleed about the degree to which the incredible heat and fires in Russia or the flooding in Pakistan are attributable to climate change, but the bottom line is undeniable: As we continue to pour astonishing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and the climate continues to respond in wildly unpredictable ways, events like these and many more just as awful and worse will happen with rising frequency. That will mean more direct human impact, more pleas for contributions from people lucky enough not to be directly devastated (this time, at least), and endless political debates about proximal vs. root causes of tragedies, e.g. are the deaths from the latest horror due to bad development patterns or climate change.

As the evidence and the terrible costs pile up, will we learn the lesson, exhibit the basic enlightened self-interest that is the hallmark of responsible adults, and take appropriate action? Stay tuned…