by Haris Gazdar
 |
| Flooding in Punjab Province, Pakistan from 2010. UN Photo/Evan Schneider |
On 6th September the Flood Forecasting Division
(FFD) of the Pakistan Meteorological
Department reported ‘Exceptionally High Flood” in Chenab at Khanki and
Jhelum at Rasul. Both rivers had already
inundated large swathes of the floodplains and hundreds of villages by 8th
September when the FFD issued warnings of a second peak over the coming 24 to
48 hours at Trimmu where these two flows meet.
Panjnad braces itself as I write and the Alipur and Jatoi tehsils of
Muzaffargarh district which bore the brunt of the 2010 Indus flood in Punjab are
under threat. The command areas of
Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri barrages – virtually all of the lower Indus floodplains
in Sindh wait. It is already a big flood and is likely to get only bigger.
The first priority, of course, is prevention of major
breaches in earthworks and embankments. But we know from past floods, and 2010
is still etched in many minds, that cruel choices will be made. Many will be
self-serving ones. It has already been
reported that the Athara Hazari tehsil of Jhang will be sacrificed to save
Jhang City. Alipur and Jatoi might drown
to save Panjnad
headworks and districts to its east.
There will be active politics around these choices, and this time next
week we will know.
It is really around the next steps – relief,
rehabilitation and recovery - that the lessons from 2010 must be recalled with
some urgency. The Citizens’ Compensation
Disbursement Card (CDCC) popularly known as the Watan Card, despite many
problems, was a success story. It acted
as a major source of sustenance and early recovery after the initial relief
supplies had dried up. The idea of
geographical targeting – that is, identifying flood affected administrative
zones and providing compensation to ALL residents of those zones – worked
well. The organizational experience
gained through the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), and the
partnerships established with NADRA and commercial banks proved invaluable, as
outlined in this
article on social protection based on research conducted by the Collective
for Social Science Research.
It is an obvious point, but does need to be made, that
floods
affected people differently according to their prior socio-economic status. The Disaster Needs Assessment for the 2010
floods skimmed around the issue of land ownership and tenure. The analysis of losses in the agricultural
and housing sectors failed to take account of inequalities in land ownership
and control, not only across classes but between men and women. Recommendations correctly included debt
relief to agriculturalists. But they failed to consider that farmers with
formal credit were the well-off ones to begin with. These richer farmers in turn acted as
creditors to poor tenant farmers and labourers. The government and donors
remained silent on whether the landless poor would also get debt relief. For housing too it was assumed that land
ownership was not a problem.
In a study
for Oxfam Pakistan Collective researchers wrote:
“A
key lesson learned from analysis of previous disasters is that humanitarian, as
well as development responses, must be anchored in a rights-based framework,
with explicit consideration for those who face inequality and were marginalized
before the disaster. Such vulnerable groups need to be protected against the
risk of dispossession as well as a return to unequal power relations. But
despite these lessons, the policy direction of government and international
development partners in regard to the post-floods response has so far paid
little attention to land rights and vulnerability as a dimension of recovery.”
I wonder if, when the waters subside, those working on
the 2014 floods will be writing something like this again.
