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Climate change impacting water availability in Sindh, poses serious health risks

36 3
09.07.2025

Climate change is an established fact, and its impact on water, agriculture, health, biodiversity, forests and socio-economic sectors are quite visible around the globe.

According to an intergovernmental panel on climate change, the least-developed and developing countries are expected to suffer more due to climate change as compared to developed nations.

This is true if we scale down this fact to the community level; in case of any climatic anomaly, poor people face major consequences due to lack of resources and access to information. Anthropogenic activities are mainly blamed for surging climate-related disasters occurring in different parts of the world, and marginal-income individuals are the major sufferers.

Pakistan is particularly vulnerable to climate change because it has generally a warm climate; it lies in a geographical region where the temperature increases are expected to be higher than the global average; its land area is mostly arid and semi-arid (about 60 per cent of the area receives less than 250mm of rainfall per year and 24pc receives between 250-500mm); its rivers are predominantly fed by the Himalayan glaciers which are reportedly receding rapidly due to global warming; its economy is largely agrarian and hence highly climate sensitive and because the country faces increasingly larger risks of variability in monsoon rains, such as large floods and extended droughts.

Within Pakistan, Sindh is particularly vulnerable to natural disaster events due to its geographical location, socio-economic vulnerability, and climatic conditions. In 2022, Sindh received rainfall in excess of 400pc over the 30-year average. Agricultural land in the low-lying areas of the province, downstream of the Indus, is highly exposed to flooding, threatening food security in the province and........

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