Pakistan’s history is strewn with catastrophic floods, displacing thousands, if not millions, in its wake. The roots and recurrence of this manmade disaster can be traced back to the colonial water management system that was enforced in this region to benefit an empire.
With the establishment of more dams and barrages in the decades that followed independence, the displacements did not end.
The International Commission of Large Dams (ICOLD) data suggests that by 2021, nearly 58,000-60,000 large dams were constructed across the globe. And this engineering activity displaced 80 million people.
The rivers are now only taking back what was always theirs.
Our next-door neighbour, India, possesses extensive water infrastructure with a reported 5,334 dams, including 447 significant ones. The country has a history of dam construction, with a substantial increase since independence in 1947 when there were fewer than 300 large dams.
On the other hand, Pakistan has approximately 150 dams, but the number of people displaced varies significantly, with a 2021 report citing an estimated 300,000 displaced people overall, with major projects like Tarbela and Mangla displacing around 177,000 people alone.
The cost of human displacement by dam building and then dam limitations and failures in our current times has often been offset by creating the idea of safety in harnessing floods, especially in urban areas.
This put people in the direct path of danger and false security. The matter was further complicated by the act of commodification, where the floodplains stopped being viewed as natural systems and were rather looked at as empty spaces that needed to be sold off for profit.
It is a mindset where everything—water, land, and even the natural flow of a river—has a price. It also puts into perspective the conscious encroachment of floodplains for housing and industries.
Despite the countless manmade reasons behind natural disasters, the government continues to pin everything on climate change. The lack of nuance has created an environment where preventable disasters continue to inflict immense damage.
While the rivers Indus, Ravi, Sutlej, and Chenab have changed their courses many times over millennia, their floodplains have remained, and their natural function has not changed. The use, however, has. Additional duties of housing the burgeoning population with their aspirations for gated communities and luxury houses have also been dumped onto these floodplains. The rivers are now only taking back what was always theirs.
Since 2010, when Pakistan faced massive floods, a debate about the type of flood has raged among the people, as these floods blur traditional definitions.
Generally, floods are categorised as riverine, flash, or coastal; however, extremely poor planning and profit-oriented development over decades have given us these compound floods.
Now floods are not happening just because of the river, or rain, or the sea. We are now facing floods caused by a combination of these elements, which makes a simple classification difficult. Table 2 illustrates these contributing factors.
Flooding in Punjab
The repetitious cycle of riverine flooding in Punjab, is exacerbated by cloudbursts and glacial lake outbursts (GLOF) in the Himalayan and Hindukush mountains. Urbanisation on the floodplains and lack of permeable surfaces add to the issues manifold when it rains beyond 100 millimetres in the region.
The resultant deluge is sparing no one, with both cities and villages being hit hard. The devastation can be seen in the catastrophic losses inflicted by floods in 2010, 2022, and the current 2025 flood, are shown in the following tables:
Tears flow with the floodwaters
A recent video on social media from a farmer on the Indian side of Punjab showed a small dam breaking. The man could be heard in the video, praying for safety, and later lamenting the cruelty of nature.
His pain is shared by thousands on both sides of the border and beyond the urban and rural boundaries.
Shujaat Hussain, an English teacher from Sialkot, held the population growth responsible for outstripping the supply and availability of natural bounties.
“We have the means of a technological society with a fatalistic medieval mind-set. A fatal combination. The state is colonial in its basic assumptions. Sialkotis have destroyed their habitat for the growth of export-oriented industries like tanneries, which contaminated the groundwater. Now we buy bottled water.”
Recalling the past, he said Nullah Palkhu, which flows from Occupied Jammu, used to have ducks floating in its sparkling water. “We imported dirty industry to earn quick bucks.”
Despite the countless manmade reasons behind natural disasters, the government continues to pin everything on climate change. The lack of nuance has created an environment where preventable disasters continue to inflict immense damage.
Karachi urban flooding
The urban flooding in Karachi is an effect of the same cause. A meme-worthy event for some, it is a nightmare of epic proportions for the millions who have no choice but to call this city their home.
Monsoon after monsoon in Karachi has made people resilient enough to tackle this tenaciously mismanaged city. But this resilience does not come for free. In every corner, a story of chaos unfolds: dilapidated sewerage lines, stolen manhole covers, broken water pipelines, and miles and miles of tangled electricity, cable TV, internet, and telephone wires.
Amidst it all, civilians bravely march on, winning accolades for their resilience from politicians and global agencies at conferences.
As city streets turn into rivers, the rivers themselves try to reach the sea where allowed.
But is resilience something to be proud of, especially in the face of acute negligence for decades? Years and years of profit-oriented development have brought the urban centre to a condition where reaching home from work can be a hit-and-miss for many.
At least 10 people died in various rain-related incidents in Karachi. All these deaths could be preventable.
The Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) has been carrying out pipeline work for almost a year now. So, a majority of roads and streets are dug up in the city. The Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation (KWSC) is working on so-called sewerage improvement, which is another reason behind dilapidated conditions. Solid waste management is something nobody cares about in Karachi.
For the power elite traveling in high-end luxury cars, none of these issues matter. What matters are the signal-free corridors and road widening exercises that enable fast travel.
This focus on vehicle-centric planning and alleged development is one reason urban flooding has become a yearly occurrence. The focus is only on the consumption of land for the benefit of a few. In all this, permeable surfaces have disappeared from the city. Thus, the city continues to function, albeit in a highly unsafe environment.
“Shahrah-e-Faisal looked like a river, and the connected streets and alleys its tributaries,” said one architect, stuck for five hours in the deluge. “Every road I tried was just more of the same.”
The architect is not the only one to face this. Countless videos of motorcycle riders floating in the road-rivers surfaced on social media.
As city streets turn into rivers, the rivers themselves try to reach the sea where allowed. But they are now filled with black cesspools of human excrement, plastic, debris, unusable solid waste, harmful chemicals, and drug-resistant pathogens.
This microplastic-filled black water then washes up with the current towards the coastal communities, who brace for the onslaught of downstream flood flow.
The delta’s demise
Places like Thatta, Badin, Kharochan, Keti Bandar, have long been facing sea erosion and rising soil salinity. The people living along the delta often drink murky water for survival. That too, when available.
The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) estimated in a 2019 study that approximately 2.2 million acres of fertile land in the Indus Delta, particularly in Tatta and Badin districts, was unproductive due to seawater encroachment. The sharp rise in salinity also made traditional crop cultivation impossible.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) provides valuable analysis via “Environmental Degradation and Impacts on Livelihoods: Sea Intrusion – A Case Study” on how the upstream diversion of Indus waters and the depletion of freshwater flows, along with rising sea levels, have caused significant sea intrusion, rendering agricultural land barren. Thus, millions from this region migrate to urban centres in search of livelihoods.
Floods exacerbate migration, increasing the population burden in the urban centres, further adding housing on riverbanks and peripheries, perpetuating a cycle of disasters.
If the government is serious about resolving the impacts of the climate crisis and genuinely desires to avoid catastrophic events, a serious shift is needed in its policy. There is an urgent need to put ecological awareness in the policy instead of mere greenwashing.
The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners.
The writer is a teacher and former journalist. She has editorial expertise on Pakistan’s economy, trade, and urban development, with academic experience in architecture and planning.