Drive for climate compensation grows after Pakistan’s floods

DADU, Pakistan (AP) — Every part of Rajul Noor's life has been wrecked by this summer's massive monsoon-driven floods.

The 12-year-old girl's family home is destroyed, as is the school that she loved. The friends she used to walk to school and play with are scattered, finding refuge elsewhere.

“Our whole world is underwater, and nobody has helped us,” she said, speaking in the tent where she, her parents and four siblings now live in Dadu district in Pakistan's Sindh province.

Almost 100% of the district's cotton and rice crops were destroyed. More than half its primary and secondary schools were fully or partially damaged, local officials say.

Boats laden with people and their belongings crisscross Dadu, past buildings still partially submerged, weeks after the rains stopped.

This level of damage is repeated in towns and cities across Pakistan.

The destruction has intensified the debate over a question of climate justice: Whether rich countries whose emissions have been the main driver of climate change owe compensation for the damage that change is inflicting on poor countries like Pakistan.

It's an idea that developed nations have repeatedly rejected, but Pakistan and other developing countries are pushing for it to be seriously discussed at COP27, next month's international climate conference in Egypt.

Pakistan in many ways crystallises the debate. Scientists have said climate change no doubt helped swell monsoon rains this summer that dumped three and a half times the normal amount of rain, putting a third of the country underwater. At least 1,300 people were killed, and 33 million people in Pakistan have been affected.

Pakistan, which contributed only 0.8% to the world's emissions, now faces damages estimated at more than $30 billion, more than 10% of its GDP.

It must repair or replace 2 million damaged or destroyed homes, nearly 24,000 schools, nearly 1,500 health facilities and 13,000 kilometres (7,800 miles) of roads. Bridges, hotels, dams, and other structures were swept away.

“These 33 million Pakistanis are paying in the form of their lives and livelihoods for the industrialisation of bigger countries,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilwal Bhutto-Zardari said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month.

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