Danger Zone

The latest warning on El Niño should not be read as another grim weather bulletin from a distant UN agency. It is a notice served on governments that still behave as though disaster begins only when the first village is submerged. The World Meteorological Organisation has warned that El Niño is now firmly established, is likely to become 'very strong' in the coming months and has an 'exceptionally high likelihood' of continuing through February. WMO chief has warned that, if the present trajectory continues, this event could become stronger than anything recorded in four decades of monitoring. UN Secretary-General António Guterres was blunter: El Niño, he said, is being 'supersized before our eyes,' while the world is already in the 'danger zone of extreme weather.' While El Niño may be a natural climate phenomenon, it is now unfolding on a planet already warmed by the burning of fossil fuels, with ocean heat, shifting rainfall and extreme temperatures turning a recurring pattern into a multiplier of damage. Pakistan has already learnt, at ruinous cost, what happens when climate warnings travel faster than the state's capacity to act on them. The 2022 floods affected 33 million people, killed more than 1,730 and caused damages and economic losses of over $30 billion, according to a post-disaster assessment by the government, World Bank, ADB, EU, UN agencies and UNDP. The lesson was not merely that Pakistan is climate-vulnerable. It was that climate vulnerability, when filtered through weak planning, poor drainage, encroached waterways, politicised relief and underfunded local governments, becomes a governance indictment. An El Niño preparedness plan must therefore be treated as a national-security exercise, not a seasonal memo. The NDMA, provincial disaster authorities, the Met Office, irrigation departments, health ministries, agriculture departments and district administrations need to work from one risk map. Which districts are vulnerable to flash floods? Which areas face drought stress? Which crops are exposed? Which cities will see the worst heat-island effect? Which hospitals lack surge capacity? Which canals, drains and reservoirs need pre-emptive management? The economic ministries should also be at the table. A strong El Niño is not only a disaster-management concern. Rather, it is an inflation risk, a food-security risk, an energy-demand risk and a fiscal risk. Crop stress can raise prices. Heat can push up electricity demand. Water disruption can sharpen provincial tensions. Disease outbreaks can overwhelm clinics already short of medicines. If climate planning is kept outside economic planning, Pakistan will continue to discover the bill only after the damage is done. The international dimension remains unavoidable. Rich countries cannot keep treating adaptation finance as charity when vulnerable states are paying for emissions they did not create. Pakistan is right to demand climate justice, concessional finance and quicker access to loss-and-damage funding. But moral force abroad will ring hollow if negligence continues at home. *