{"id":20037549,"date":"2020-08-31T14:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T08:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=37549"},"modified":"2021-01-29T18:11:01","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T12:41:01","slug":"poor-planning-poor-governance-poor-monitoring-flood-karachi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/poor-planning-poor-governance-poor-monitoring-flood-karachi\/","title":{"rendered":"Karachi a victim of poor planning, bad governance \u2013 and floods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It does not always rain in Karachi during the monsoon. When it does, it floods. It was worse this year, with three days of heavy rainfall in late August leading to least <a href=\"https:\/\/tribune.com.pk\/story\/2261739\/20-districts-of-sindh-declared-calamity-affected-after-rains-wreaked-havoc\">47 deaths<\/a> due to drowning, electrocution, as well as house and wall collapses. Twenty districts of Pakistan\u2019s Sindh province \u2013 of which Karachi is the capital \u2013 have been declared \u201ccalamity affected\u201d. Personnel from the armed forces have been called out to rescue stranded people, distribute food and medical aid.<\/p>\n<p>Many parts of Karachi went without electricity for 50 hours, prompting Sindh\u2019s Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah to ask, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1577022\/sindh-cm-shows-up-at-ke-office-amid-continued-power-outages-as-8-more-die-in-rain-related-incidents\">What kind of service is this?\u201d<\/a> Internet and mobile phone networks were disrupted all over Pakistan\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n<p>Women, children and the elderly waded through waist-deep sewage to reach rescue boats as rain continued to pelt down; the boats had to navigate around floating furniture, submerged cars, motorcycles and even shipping crates pushed around by the force of the floodwater.<\/p>\n<p>The meteorological department totalled August rainfall in Karachi at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/pakistan-karachi-experiences-worst-floods-in-almost-a-century-dozens-dead\/a-54725008\">484 millimetres (19 inches)<\/a>, with the highest daily rainfall of 130 mm at PAF Faisal Base on August 28.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast year, through the three monsoon months, the PAF Faisal Base recorded a total of 345 mm of rains; this year in just two months, over 600 mm rain has been recorded there,\u201d Sardar Sarfaraz, the Pakistan Meteorological Department\u2019s Karachi head told <a href=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/\">The Third Pole<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe rains are unprecedented; and in all likelihood, this seems like an erratic event, with the last such intense rain recorded in 1931,\u201d said Sarfaraz. \u201cI cannot say with finality that this rainfall can definitively be attributed to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/flo.uri.sh\/visualisation\/3626104\/embed\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 100%!; margin-top: 4px!important; text-align: right!important;\"><\/div>\n<p>\u201cDue to the effect of global warming on the hydrological cycle, we will see a continued intensification of monsoons in the coming years,\u201d predicted climate expert Imran Khalid, who heads the Environment and Climate Change section of the Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where will the water go?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Khalid wondered, though, if Karachi would have been any better off without climate change. According to him, the city\u2019s woes are rooted in poor governance and planning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy encroaching and blocking the streams that form the natural watershed, over many decades, the authorities have set us up to fail,\u201d he pointed out, terming the flood footage on television a manifestation of \u201cdecades of apathy and ignorance about the laws of nature\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you block the flow of water, it will go around you; if it can\u2019t go around you, it will continue to rise until it envelopes you.\u201d The crises were \u201cof our own making\u201d, Khalid added, emphasising the need to incorporate the laws of nature into urban planning.<\/p>\n<p>Karachi has over 550 big and small storm water drains. \u201cBut over the years, some as wide as 200 feet have narrowed to just 30 feet today, due to unauthorised construction,\u201d admitted Karachi\u2019s outgoing mayor Waseem Akhtar, head of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC). As he left office on August 30, he said, \u201cKarachi is for everyone but nobody is for Karachi.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Going about town to inspect the damage, Chief Minister Shah chided people for \u201cbuilding houses in the belly of the Malir river\u201d, according to media reports. \u201cThe entire city is sinking because of your encroachments,\u201d he reportedly said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>See:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/2020\/07\/09\/early-downpour-exposes-karachis-drainage-flaws\/\">Early downpour exposes Karachi&#8217;s drainage flaws<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Noman Ahmed, dean of the Architecture and Management Sciences department at Karachi\u2019s NED University, said some encroachments happened in connivance with different government agencies, while some were \u201corganic\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor example, the encroachments on Gujjar Nala were facilitated by the KMC functionaries by providing inappropriate leases [on its edges \u2013 in areas that were not supposed to be inhabited in the first place],\u201d Ahmed said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe alignment of the nalas [drains] have clearly been demarcated in all land-use plans available with the different civic agencies,\u201d said Ahmed, and therefore selling plots of land was nothing less than a \u201ccriminal act\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He did not blame those who had bought the plots. Ahmed said people had started building on the dry bed of Gujjar Nala because for decades there was nothing more than a thin stream. \u201cThey occupied the land without knowing how vulnerable they were to sudden inundation, and this is what happened in recent rains.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Architect and heritage consultant Marvi Mazhar also attributed \u201cunplanned and unregulated growth, lack of monitoring and corruption\u201d as major reasons for the havoc the rains wrought on the city of 16 million, which has been heavily \u201cconcretised, with not enough soft ground left for water to be absorbed\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The problem has persisted despite court judgements, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1533139\">an order from the country\u2019s chief justice<\/a> that all illegal construction be removed from Karachi \u2013 whether on or off the drains.<\/p>\n<p>Describing the removal of encroachments as \u201ca very tricky affair\u201d, Ahmed said that very often debris left behind by a demolition crew causes more obstruction to water flow than the original buildings.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_35071\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35071\" style=\"width: 1020px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-35071 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/MA2.jpeg\" alt=\"Karachi Pakistan Drain\" width=\"1020\" height=\"679\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35071\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Encroachments along Karachi\u2019s Mehmoodabad drain; cleaning work remained incomplete at the start of the monsoon [image courtesy Karachi Municipal Corporation]<\/figcaption><\/figure><strong>What is to be done?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese drains can actually be added into beautification plans with plantations on either side, and run across the city like in Amsterdam,\u201d said Mazhar. Instead, she said, they are seen and treated as an eyesore with garbage thrown alongside them, which invariably slips into the drain thereby choking it. She held both residents and the government responsible for the indifference shown towards Karachi\u2019s garbage.<\/p>\n<p>Now Prime Minister Imran Khan has said he wants a \u201cpermanent solution\u201d to problems associated with drains, the sewage system and water supply.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed said the government should come up with a \u201ccomprehensive policy for not just all the drains but other waterways and spaces where water accumulates. Just working on a piecemeal basis will not get the desired results.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also pointed out that those evicted in this process must be rehabilitated. \u201cThe Sindh government has ample land in Karachi\u2019s suburbs. If done in a step-by-step manner, not everyone will need to be evicted in one go, or at least till the re-demarcation of the nalas takes place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many residents feel the collapse of municipal services and consequent problems such as the recent flooding is because Karachi has become too unwieldy to be governed. With 19 different land-owning agencies under the three tiers of government \u2013 the city government in the hands of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the provincial government of the Pakistan People\u2019s Party that holds the purse strings and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf at the centre \u2013 the city\u2019s problems only get bounced around and the blame game continues.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Same situation all over South Asia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Substitute the names of the rivers, drains and political parties, and the same story is repeated in varying degrees across all the cities of South Asia \u2013 Rawalpindi, Mumbai, Delhi, Patna, Kolkata, Dhaka and on and on. For years, residents have been resigned to the mess and vented on social media. Now they have started coming out on the streets \u2013 it happened in Kolkata in May after week-long power failures in some suburbs following Cyclone Amphan and it is happening in Karachi now. Perhaps the fact that the hardships have now spread from slums to tony neighbourhoods has something to do with it. The internet is back now, and the phones are working, but the protests continue. Their effect remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unchecked encroachments, the apathy of authorities and erratic weather in Karachi have wreaked havoc upon citizens \u2013 a reality shared by many big cities in South Asia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20000276,"featured_media":20037551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761,50039903],"tags":[519,543,50040328],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000112],"class_list":["post-20037549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","category-water","tag-climate-impacts","tag-extreme-weather","tag-water-quality","country-pakistan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v26.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Karachi a victim of poor planning, 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She also contributes regularly to the Inter Press Service.","url":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/author\/zofeen-t-ebrahim\/","sameAs":["https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/author\/zofeen-t-ebrahim\/"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20037549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20000276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20037549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20037549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20037551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20037549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20037549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20037549"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=20037549"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=20037549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}