Beyond Floods and Heatwaves

Muhammad Wasib

The 80th United Nations General Assembly begins on 9 September 2025 with the theme of Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights. It has a dense symbolic and practical load to it on the part of Pakistan. It is not just a mere diplomatic summit, but a chance to challenge the world with the most existential and risky challenge: climate change. People will never believe the message of being better together unless resources and justice are granted to those who have been victimized by a crisis that was not of their own fault.

“Pakistan’s emissions are minute, yet it pays one of the greatest prices of climate change.”

Pakistan exemplifies this kind of injustice more than other countries. Although its contribution is less than one percent of the world’s greenhouse emissions, Pakistan is always ranked among the top ten countries that are most vulnerable in terms of climate. The numbers of the past years are a story of destruction that can hardly be described using words. The 2022 floods caused one-third of the country to lie underwater, displacing millions of people and causing damage in all the provinces. The number of people hit was thirty-three million, which is more than the population of several countries. Two million houses were destroyed, and the families are left under the plastic sheets and improvised camps. Expansive farmlands were submerged, and 4.4 million acres of produce were swept across at a time when the harvest was in full swing. The floods took more than 1,700 lives, and inflicted a total of more than 30 billion dollars worth of economic damage, reversing developmental gains and leaving millions of people in poverty.

However, 2022 was not the cessation of the nightmare. Climate change is not a far-off situation in Pakistan; it is a reality and is being repeated and reinforced. Severe monsoon rains that are heavier than normal, coupled with unforeseen cloudburst floods, have already taken the lives of more than 800 people since late June. Whole villages have been washed away in KP, Punjab and Sindh as overflowing rivers banked and flooded the villages. Researchers attest that the effect of climate change is going directly toward the intensification of monsoon patterns in South Asia, which are raising the intensity and frequency of extreme rainfall events. To Pakistan, this begs the disastrous question of another disaster, even more likely, one that would be worse, within the immediate future.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has had to suffer some of the most severe heatwaves in its history. In Sindh and southern Punjab, the temperatures have been above 50 °C, burning fields, crops, and killing people. These extremes can no longer be considered extraordinary. They are becoming the new reality. Most susceptible populations with no access to cooling, clean water, or proper shelter are affected the most, as the number of respiratory issues like heatstroke, dehydration, and death increases every summer. This puts a heavy load on the poor, the aged, women, and children, which further widens the existing inequalities and reveals the weakness of the social fabric in Pakistan.

“The 2022 floods displaced 33 million people, more than the population of several countries.”

Floods and heat are not the only types of crisis. Another time bomb is the melting of glaciers. Over 7,000 glaciers are located in Pakistan, the highest density other than polar regions. These glaciers form an important source of water that supplies the Indus River system to millions of people in agriculture, hydropower, and drinking water. However, the twin dangers are being caused by accelerated melting caused by increased global temperatures. In the short term, there are glacial lake outburst floods that pose a sudden, devastating effect on the communities downstream by destroying infrastructure and livelihoods within minutes.

The unfairness is in the lack of appropriateness between responsibility and vulnerability. This crisis was not caused by Pakistan. Its emissions are minute in comparison with those of industrial giants whose development was carried out over centuries of carbon-based growth. But Pakistan is one of the countries paying one of the greatest prices. The consequences of climate change are a never-ending disaster to a nation, which is already faced with economic issues, political instability, and social inequality.

This is the reason why Pakistan has to utilize the platform of the UNGA to be urgent and moral. Climate change is not a remote or abstract problem. It is a lived reality that is tearing lives, livelihoods, and homes today. The doctrine of shared responsibility should not remain on propaganda. The world could not sustain any further the cost of resilience and recovery to the vulnerable nations left to shoulder them separately. Funding for adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage is not a charitable or voluntary aid to be given to an International entity. It is a universal responsibility that is based on justice.

The call by Pakistan has to be positioned as a right, rather than a good call. Peace, development, and human rights as well as climate justice, should be perceived as a global responsibility. In its absence, the credibility of multilateralism, as such, is in question. When, even after 80 years, the United Nations fails to make sure that the most vulnerable populations are not left to fend as lone rangers in the case of a global crisis, then the very concept of better together becomes a hollow slogan.

“Climate change is not abstract; it is tearing lives and homes today.”

Such 2022 floods, fatal rains in 2025, the heatwave records, and melting glaciers are not solitary tragedies. They are all forms of planetary crisis, which have no boundaries. The victim this day is Pakistan, and tomorrow any other nation can be victimized. It has been understood that the lesson: climate change is the ultimate test of solidarity in the world. It will not only consign millions of people in Pakistan to more misery, but it will also undermine the very ideals that the UNGA is said to promote.

Once Pakistan gets the floor at the General Assembly, it should remind the world that the phenomenon of climate injustice is the challenge of our era. The response to it is not only a matter of survival of susceptible countries, but also the legitimizing of credibility and legitimacy of the international system itself. Climate summits and world pledges are just words on paper, and communities drown, burn, and starve without actual commitment. Shared responsibility should imply action, and to Pakistan, the action can not be too soon.

The writer is pursuing an MS from Ripha International University.