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Experts say Pakistan’s extreme floods, which have displaced 20 million people and swamped a fifth of the country, have been made far worse by decades of river mismanagement. The World’s Clark Boyd reports. Download MP3
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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH-Boston. Some relief may be on the way for people in Pakistan today. The UN says that nearly half of the nearly $460 million needed for initial relief efforts has been secured after days of lobbying. But the UN says Pakistan still faces a growing catastrophe following the country’s worst ever flooding. The floods have been caused by relentless monsoon rains but some are laying at least part of the blame on mismanagement of the Indus River system. The river has been dammed and diverted for agriculture and flood control schemes. The World’s Clark Boyd reports.
CLARK BOYD: The Indus flows some 2,000 miles from the Himalayas high in Tibet to the Arabian Sea. Those who live along the Indus call it the great mother and humans have not hesitated to make it their own.
DANISH MUSTAFAD: The Indus has one of the largest irrigation systems in the world.
BOYD: [SOUNDS LIKE] Danish Mustafad teaches environment, politics and development at Kings College in London. He says more than two thirds of the river’s water is diverted for farming. But along with water, the Indus also carries a huge load of silt and with so much water diverted, the silt builds up in the riverbed, instead of being flushed to the sea. Mustafad say this cause problems when a once in a lifetime monsoon like this one hits.
MUSTAFAD: With the result that previously the kinds of floods that would have been contained within the channel can no longer be contained within the channel because the channel capacity has been reduced. So I often say that we have basically made a bargain whereby we have substituted high frequency, low intensity events for low frequency, high intensity events.
BOYD: In other words, all the diversions have cut the chances of regular small floods but increased the chances of rare big ones. He says that other countries have understood the dangers of such practices for years.
MUSTAFAD: Like in the United States for example, since the late eighties when the Americans came to the conclusion of wait a minute, this is what is happening and it is making the flood peaks a lot worse. Now for example in the Glenn Canyon dam or in the Hoover dam, they create artificial floods in order to flush out the channels.
BOYD: But to do that along the Indus, you’ve have to displace, at least temporarily, the millions who now live in the managed areas along the river. James Dalton is water management advisor to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
JAMES DALTON: By draining these areas to make more productive land, you’re also taking out of the equation areas where water would naturally flow, areas of wetlands where you could naturally soak up some of the water of the highest periods of the flow.
BOYD: Dalton says the current flooding in Pakistan is a stark reminder of how hard it is to balance human needs with the needs of the river.
DALTON: It’s an extreme event and one of the challenges is understanding the risk in creating these benefits in sub-plains near river basins where you provide infrastructure which allows you live productive lives and produce a lot of food. But at the same time, people living in river basins and settling there puts them at risk from extreme events like this.
BOYD: Water management experts hope that recent events in Pakistan will shock administrators into taking a more long-term approach to managing the Indus. Danish Mustafad of Kings College suggests a number of measures, including things like restoring wetlands, making sure data devices used to monitor the river are working, even creating a cellphone early warning system for floods but he’s not optimistic for Pakistan or anywhere else.
MUSTAFAD: River management has pretty much been rubbish around the world, let me just say that right away. Our arrogance in the face of nature is not something that’s specific to Pakistan. Everybody does it.
BOYD: A little humility, Mustafad says might go a long way. For The World, this is Clark Boyd in London.
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