How climate change is worsening Pakistan's deadly floods

Rescue workers and relatives searched for 1-year-old Zara's body in knee-deep water. She had been swept away in a flash flood. The bodies of her parents and three siblings had already been discovered several days earlier.

“Suddenly I saw a lot of water. I climbed onto the roof and urged them to join us,” Zara's grandfather Arshad told the BBC, showing the dirt road from which they were taken in Sambrial village in northern Punjab state in August.

Family members tried to join in, but it was too late. All six people were swept away by the strong current.

Every year, deadly floods occur in Pakistan during the monsoon season.

This year, the floods began in late June and killed more than 1,000 people within three months. At least 6.9 million people have been affected, according to the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA.

The South Asian country is suffering from the devastating effects of climate change, despite accounting for just 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To witness the impact, the BBC spent three months traveling from the mountains of the north to the plains of the south. Climate change was impacting each state differently.

However, there was one element in common. The poorest suffer the most.

We met people who had lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones, resigned to going through it again in the next monsoon.

Monsoon floods begin in the north, and global warming is taking place, best known in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan.

There are more than 7,000 glaciers between the high peaks of the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush. But with rising temperatures, they are starting to melt.

The consequences can be devastating. Snowmelt can turn into glacial lakes that can burst suddenly. Thousands of villages are at risk.

This summer, landslides and flash floods destroyed hundreds of homes and damaged roads.

It is difficult to warn against such “glacial lake outbursts.'' The area is remote and cell phone service is poor. Pakistan and the World Bank are working to improve early warning systems, but the mountainous region often makes them ineffective.

Community is a powerful asset. Wasit Khan, a shepherd, woke up to a torrent of ice and debris and ran to a place with better signal. He began warning as many villagers as possible.

“I told everyone to leave their belongings and leave their homes, take their wives, children and elderly people and flee,” he told BBC Urdu's Muhammad Zubair.

Thanks to him, dozens of people were saved.

In the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtankhwa, the danger took a different form.

The BBC found hundreds of villagers in Gadun digging into a pile of rocks with their bare hands.

Local officials said torrential rain caused flash flooding in the early morning hours. It occurs when a sudden updraft occurs in moist, humid air, causing localized heavy rain. The current washed away several houses and caused landslides.

Men from nearby villages rushed to help. This was invaluable, but not enough. The excavator, which the villagers desperately needed, was stuck on a flooded road, with some sections blocked by huge rocks.

“Nothing will happen until the machines arrive,” one man told the BBC.

Suddenly, silence fell over the area. Dozens of men were standing in a corner. The bodies of two children soaked in black mud were pulled out from under the rubble and taken away.

Scenes like this occurred across the state, with uprooted trees and major infrastructure destroyed, delaying rescue efforts. A helicopter carrying relief supplies crashes in bad weather, killing all on board.

In villages and cities, millions of people settle around rivers and streams, or flood-prone areas. Pakistan's River Protection Act, which prohibits building within 200 feet (61 meters) of a river or its tributaries, is aimed at solving this problem. But for many, settling elsewhere is too expensive.

Illegal construction makes matters worse.

Climate scientist Fahad Saeed believes this is due to local corruption and authorities failing to enforce the law. he told the BBC in Islamabad. The location was next to a half-built four-story concrete building the size of a parking lot. And it was right next to the river where we saw a child die in a flood this summer.

“We're only a few kilometers away from Parliament, and yet things like this are still happening in Pakistan,” he says, clearly irritated. “It's because of misgovernment, and the government's role is to be a watchdog.”

Former climate minister Sen. Sherry Rehman, who chairs Pakistan's Senate climate committee, calls the granting of construction permits in vulnerable areas “grafting” or simply “turning a blind eye.”

By late August, floods had submerged 4,500 villages further south in Punjab province, overwhelming Pakistan's breadbasket, a country that cannot always import enough food.

For the first time, three rivers – Sutlej, Ravi and Chenab – flooded simultaneously, triggering the biggest rescue operation in decades.

“This was an extraordinary event of the utmost importance,” said Syed Mohammad Tayyab Shah, chief risk officer of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

In Lahore, the capital of Punjab, the impact on richer and poorer communities was significant. The gated community of Park View City has been flooded by the Ravi River, rendering its precious streets impassable. Residents of luxury homes were forced to evacuate.

Abdullah and his father Gulraiz, a local man who surveyed the damage, were assured that the water would soon be drained thanks to federal minister Aleem Khan, a real estate developer in the area.

“No problem, Aleem Khan will do it,” Gullaiz told the BBC.

But for residents of the theme park's poorer areas, the flooding was devastating. One police officer told the BBC they had to continue rescuing people who had swam back to their homes as the water level receded, and were desperately trying to save as much as they could. But then the water level rises and they become stranded.

We saw a man come home with an inflatable donut on his hip.

Some residents were moved to tents provided by Pakistan's Al-Khidmat Foundation. Sumela was sitting outside in the summer heat, just a few weeks away from giving birth. She was very thin.

“Doctors say I will need two blood transfusions this week,” she said as she held her toddler, Aash.

Nearby, Ali Ahmad balanced a small kitten he had rescued from the floodwaters on his shoulder. The boy was one of the few who had a mattress to sleep on.

By the end of the monsoon season, floods had displaced more than 2.7 million people and damaged more than 1 million hectares of farmland in Punjab, according to the United Nations.

Further south, in the Multan district, which is regularly hit by flooding, tents lined dirt roads and highways, further underscoring the scale of the humanitarian crisis.

Access to health care was already a challenge in rural Pakistan, but when the floods hit, the challenge became unbearable for many of the women we met.

Talhab Asghar of the BBC Urdu program met his two sisters-in-law, who are nine months pregnant. Doctors warned them that they were not drinking enough water. They held up bottles and explained. The water was completely brown.

Some people are trying different solutions.

Architect Yasmin Lari has designed what she calls “climate resilient homes” in dozens of villages. In Pono, near Hyderabad, women showed off the BBC huts they had built, large circular buildings on wooden stilts. Dr. Lari called it their training center and said families could move their belongings there and take shelter.

But Dr Lari argues that building the entire village on stilts would be impractical and too expensive. Instead, she says her design prevents roofs from collapsing, and by using natural materials such as bamboo and lime concrete, the houses can be quickly rebuilt by villagers themselves.

Pakistan has reached a stage where “it's not about saving buildings, it's about saving lives,” she says.

This is the reality of Pakistan. Climate scientists and politicians the BBC spoke to all warned of an increasingly worrying future.

“The monsoon will become more intense every year,” said Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah of the NDMA. “Every year we have new surprises.”

As the country faces increasing and ever-changing challenges posed by climate change, with the poorest people often being hit hardest, some are refraining from returning to homes that are likely to flood next year. “There's nowhere else to go.”