The flood damage is rising by the day – both in terms of fatalities and financial losses (private and state owned) with the last monsoon rains forecast to end this week. The question is whether the government has enough means to meet the needs of the growing number of victims?

There are two sides to this query. First, whether external donor assistance would be forthcoming. In this context it is relevant to note that in the 2022 floods where devastation was estimated at over 40 billion dollars the government received pledges of around 10 billion dollars (a mixture of grants and loans) and two years later, by 2024, had received only 2.8 billion dollars of the pledges. It is unclear how much of the disbursed amount was in loans and where it was spent given that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently publicly lamented that “we have learned no lessons from 2022.”

Many parliamentarians are urging the government to build dams, including the extremely politically controversial Kalabagh Dam that prompted Sindh ministers to oppose its construction.

The 2022 Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman, who together with the then Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif played a pivotal role in raising awareness on the scale and depth of the devastation in Pakistan globally, tweeted the following last week: “Every time there is a super flood a lot of people start clutching at “magic bullet” solutions like mega dams. I hate to blow the myth, but the era of huge dams is behind us. For several reasons.

Tarbela had huge US financing behind it. Mangla too had international consortium financing like ADB, WB in the aftermath of the Indus Water Treaty. Now we should focus on completing Diamir and Dasu if we can. Any other big dam conversations should be rooted in reality, they can neither be financed nor maintained for silt.

Both our big dams are silted up because the Himalayan range feeds them and is known for extremely high silt flows. The solutions are not at all unattainable and,........

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