Nature
PUBLISHED
At least 1,000 people have died in Pakistan due to severe flash flooding following record-breaking heatwaves in what’s been described as a “ground zero of a climate dystopia” by the country’s minister for Climate Change.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Along with +1,000 deaths, the flooding has displaced more than 33 million people and submerged up to a third of the country, an area approximately the size of Britain, according to the Guardian.
Flooding has been impacting Pakistan for several weeks, but the situation intensified over the weekend, resulting in tens of thousands of people reportedly fleeing from their homes in northern Pakistan.
Footage from Balochistan, a typically arid desert region of Pakistan, shows floodwaters engulfing the land as far as the eye can see. The situation is so bad that helicopters are struggling to find dry ground to drop essential supplies on.
"It is not stopping, the rain is relentless. The water is coming down in buckets from a merciless sky,” Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s federal minister for Climate Change, told Deutsche Welle.
"It is a climate catastrophe."
“A merciless, unrelenting torrential Monsoon has inundated an entire country. We are now at ground zero of a climate dystopia. The world must understand that a tipping point has been crossed in the fight against climate change and it is time to act accordingly,” Rehman said in an interview with the UK’s Channel 4 News.
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