The 2026 monsoon is projected to bring 22 to 26 per cent more rainfall than this year’s, the NDMA said, preceded by a short winter and intense summer.
This isn’t new news, though. In a Public Accounts Committee meeting in August, the NDMA had repeated the same 22 to 26 per cent figure.
“There is a significant risk of flooding from snowmelt,” the Chairperson of the National Disaster Management Authority General Inam Haider warned, noting that heat waves will likely trigger increased glacial lake outburst floods. “Pakistan’s more than 7,000 glaciers are melting at rates that have increased by two to three per cent”.
The Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik said that in the past three to four floods, 4,570 people have lost their lives, “Not even our wars have claimed so many lives”.
“The human cost extends far beyond casualties. An estimated 40 million people have been displaced by the last four major floods, including 20 million children and 20 million mothers,” Malik said, describing families watching homes built over eight years of labour wash away in hours.
The economic toll has been equally devastating. The 2022 floods alone caused damage exceeding 9 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP, with direct losses accounting for 4.5 per cent. “We struggle to grow GDP by three or four per cent, and nine per cent is destroyed by floods,” Malik said, highlighting the futility of development efforts in the face of accelerating climate disasters.
