Floods of Pakistan

Floods of Pakistan
HELP CENTER

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

USHAHIDI IS NOW REPORTING PAKISTANS' FLOOD CRISIS.



USHAHIDI, The Ultimate Crisis Reporting System.

Question
:What is the purpose of Ushahidi, and how does Ushahidi works?

Answer:
The Purpose of Ushahidi is to get all related incidents(flood) reported on a single web-page, so that resources could be allocated and duplication can be reduced.
Ushahidi works by using reported incidents documented by ordinary people, via mobile SMS technology and posting them on a central website having the zoom-able country map.

Visit Ushahidi website:http://pakreport.org/ushahidi/
10 GOOD WAYS TO HELP THE FLOOD VICTIMS OF PAKISTAN:
(Please click the name of organization to get to the link)
  1. Edhi Foundation
  2. Imran Khan & MKRF Pukaar
  3. Pakistan Red Crescent Society
  4. Sahara for Life Trust
  5. The Citizen Foundation
  6. Islamic relief USA
  7. SOS Children Village
  8. Punjab(CM) Flood Relief & Rehabilitation.
  9. Save the Children
  10. RSPN

Sunday, August 29, 2010

All Talks and No DAMS.


Two Photos of Kotri Barrage – One Year Apart

The two photos of River Indus at Kotri barrage – taken approximately a year apart. In the first photo you can see people walking on the dry Indus bed and second photo is from 2 days ago where the whole barrage structure is under threat due to super flood here.



(1) June 29, 2009 This photo was part of our post on the Indus Day in 2010 where we wrote about depleting Water Resources of Pakistan. Today this photo seems so unreal!


(2) August 25, 2010.Note the tags with our post today as well as the post on Indus Day are ‘environment’ and ‘disasters’ but within 6 months the disaster has manifested itself in such a starkly opposite form.


PAKISTANS' FLOOD IN NUMBERS

THE MASS OF DESTRUCTION.


Pakistanis Directly Affected:
20,000,000+
(According to the UN this eclipses even in the 2004 Tsunami, 2005 Kashmir Earthquake and the 2010 Haiti Earthquake combined)

Proportion of Pakistan now Submerged:
20% (One-Fifth) of the Country
(Greater than the size of all England, all Bangladesh, and some 140 different countries )

Proportion of Pakistanis now Affected:
11% – 1 Out of Every 9 Pakistanis
(Greater than the entire population of Sri Lanka, Netherlands, Switzerland, and over 150 different countries)

Pakistanis in Urgent Need of Food Relief:
6,000,000+
(Others need assistance too, these are life-threatening)

Children at Risk of Disease:
3,500,000+
(Cholera outbreaks have already been reported)

Pakistanis now Homeless:
2,000,000+
(In need of immediate shelter assistance)

Pakistanis Reached by Relief Efforts:
500,000
(Compare to numbers above)

Agricultural Cropland Already flooded:
1,400,000 acres
(Also 10,000 cows have perished)

Houses Destroyed and Damaged:
900,000
(In every province of Pakistan)

Estimated Cost of Rebuilding After Floods:
US$15,000,000,000
(US$2.5B in Northern Areas only)

UN’s Appeal for Assistance:
US$459,000,000
(Made on August 11, 2010)

Amount Pledged by UN in Response to Appeal:
US$352,500,000
(Including $75.76M from USA, $$44M from Saudi Arabia, $32.3M from UK, $27M from UN, $26M from EU)

Amount Received by UN in Response to Appeal:
US$184,000,000
(As of August 17, 2010)

Tents Provided:
119,000
(By comparison, 1M tents provided after 2005 Earthquake)

Boats Available for Rescue Activities:
912
(NMDA numbers, August 16)

Helicopters Available for Rescue Activities:
57
(NMDA numbers, August 16)


FROM SOUTH PUNJAB TO SINDH.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

GOOGLE HELPS PAKISTAN FLOOD VICTIMS.






Responding to the floods in Pakistan

8/13/2010 09:38:00 AM
Pakistan has been struck by the worst flooding in its recorded history. The latest estimate of the number of people affected by the flood exceeds 14 million—more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Critical infrastructure has been damaged over the last two weeks and clean water is in short supply. As monsoons approach, flooding is expected to worsen.

Our Crisis Response team has been working to use existing tools and build new ones to help the relief efforts. We just launched a page in Urdu and English where you can find information, resources and donation opportunities to help the victims of the floods. We’re also donating $250,000 to international and local NGOs to immediately aid in relief efforts. Although we’ve been able to provide satellite imagery for disasters in the past, cloud cover in Pakistan has prevented us from compiling useful imagery so far. We hope to share imagery as soon as possible.

Read the rest of the post at the link below:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/responding-to-floods-in-pakistan.html

No proof of existence of geophysical weapon – physicist




Rivers(Map) of Pakistan.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ideas that can save lives.



LifeStraw®
is a portable water filter it
is an invention created by Torben Vestergaard Frandsen, a Danish innovator, that effectively removes all bacteria and parasites responsible for causing common diarrhoeal diseases. LifeStraw® requires no electrical power or spare parts and can be carried around for easy access to safe and clean water.

Best thing about this product is that it does not only deliver 100% germ free water but only cost Pak Rs 400/- per straw that can filter 1000 liter of flood water into drinkable germ free water. LifeStraw is the need of today as about 14 million people are at risk of water borne illnesses.



If you would like to donate this gift of life to the Flood hit people of Pakistan, you are requested to follow the link below:

http://www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/news/press-releases/291-vestergaard-frandsen-response-to-emergency-flooding-in-pakistan


Please Watch this video clip of A.R.Y DIGITAL NETWORK Broadcast,
as it demonstrates the utility of this lifesaving product.


PLEASE DONATE LIFESTRAW.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Imran Khan aur MKRF ki "Pukaar"

IMRAN KHAN JOINS HANDS WITH GEO TV NETWORKS' MKR FOUNDATION FOR COLLECTING DONATIONS FOR THE PAKISTAN' FLOOD VICTIMS.

PLEASE STEP FORWARD & HELP.

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NEWS ARTICLE

MKRF, Imran Khan, other celebrities in Geo telethon

Sunday, August 22, 2010
News Desk
RAWALPINDI: The worst floods in the country’s history have made every eye tearful. The United Nations has declared the floods devastation worse than 2005 Tsunami. So far at least 14 million people have been rendered homeless by the unprecedented calamity.
This large-scale destruction has also left behind the devastation caused by the 2005 earthquake. Thousands of villages have been destroyed and the displaced people are forced to live in relief camps. In response to the aid appeal, the world community has responded abruptly and donations and aid has been coming from different parts of the world.
The foreign aid is unavoidable in the wake of this large-scale devastation. But instead of depending on foreign aid, we will have to invite philanthropists’ attention towards this disaster and fully try to collect donations.
To start this good activity from home, Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman Foundation (MKRF) and Imran Khan took joint steps with the name of “Pukaar” to help the flood affectees. “Pukaar” is gathering on one platform the philanthropists and those who equally share grief of their countrymen. Telethon “Pukaar” will be presented on Geo TV with the collaboration of Imran Khan and Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman Foundation today (Sunday).
The personalities who will be present in Telethon include Lollywood actress and director Reema Khan, renowned director Sayed Noor, model and actress Mahreen Raheel, actress and writer Bushra Ansari, Behroz Sabzwari, Javed Shaikh, singer Jawad Ahmed, SM Munir, Saba Pervez and Imran Khan.
Noorul Hassan and Sahir Lodhi will host the telethon. Geo viewers could give donations for flood victims and talk to their favourite personalities in the telethon from 3pm to 8pm today (Sunday).
A mega welfare initiative was launched by the Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman Foundation under the banner of “Pukaar” for the relief and rehabilitation of the 2005 earthquake victims. “Pukaar” is not only of the Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman Foundation and Imran Khan, but it is “Pukaar” (call) of time, religion and humanity.
The Pakistani nation does not lake passion, and only a “Pukaar” (call) was needed. Now when this call has been given, it is hoped that people all over the world, especially Pakistani nationals, will respond to it and come ahead to help out their countrymen in this hour of need.
..

Source :http://thenews.com.pk/22-08-2010/Top-Story/78.htm

UN warns situation in southern Pakistan could worsen as flood relief continues

Pakistan flood victims 'have no concept of terrorism'

Pakistan flood victims 'have no concept of terrorism'
read this post

The Flood & the After Flood.





Satellite Images of River Indus Floodings.



Will the Pakistan floods strike again?


The recent floods in Pakistan's Indus Valley are of truly Biblical proportions.

The UN estimates that the humanitarian crisis is now larger than the combined effects of the three worst natural disasters to strike in the past decade

These include the Asian tsunami and the major earthquakes that devastated Kashmir and Haiti.

The headline figure of 1,700 killed masks the real scale of the disaster that has displaced 14 million people.

As I write, the southern city of Hyderabad, with a population of 1.5 million, stands on the brink of inundation as peak floodwaters surge downstream.

Scientists have described this catastrophe as a once-in-a-century flood.

But could climate change mean that floods of this magnitude, or even bigger, become a more regular occurrence?


"Rivers just can't cope with all that water in such a short time,
It was five times, maybe 10 times, more than normal”
Rajiv Sinha
Indian Institute of Technology

The "Great Mother"

The Indus is one of the world's great rivers.

From its headwaters in the Himalayas of Tibet, it flows north-west through India before turning sharply south across Pakistan. It finally discharges into the Arabian Sea, a journey of some 3,200km (2,000 miles).

Although some of its water comes from melting Himalayan glaciers, the vast majority is dumped by the summer monsoon.

As torrential rain sweeps in from the Indian Ocean, floods are triggered almost annually.

Humans have had long experience of Indus floods.

Its floodplain was an early cradle of civilisation 9,000 years ago. Here people first gave up their nomadic ways to farm livestock and cultivate crops.

Today, the Indus Valley is home to 100 million people, who rely on it completely for drinking water and irrigation. To many, it is "the Great Mother".

Yet, as the catastrophic floods of August 2010 demonstrate, the Indus is both friend and foe.

History lessons

Geologists are working round the clock to better understand the ancient flood history of the Indus River.

Such history lessons will help to better predict its erratic behaviour and "plan for our own uncertain future", said Professor Peter Clift of Aberdeen University, an expert on the Indus River.

His team recently used makeshift "rigs" to drill down into the sands and mud of the Indus floodplain. By precisely dating layers of flood-deposited sand, they were able to work out past changes in river flow.

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Read the full story at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10958760


Sunday, August 22, 2010

Hi-resolution Flood Map

IDEAS for Flood Relif: Open-source architecture can bring back livelihood to the Pakistans' Flood Victims.


Cameron Sinclair on open-source architecture | Video on TED.com


Cameron Sinclair an architect by profession, Demonstrate how he has successfully implemented his ideas for bring back livelihood for the victims of Tsunami, Cameron argues about using local resources & local materials for bringing back life to the calamity hit people.
Cameron ideas can very well be employed in our situation, as I believe that soon we shall be needing to get the flood hit victims on their feet.
Please watch the TED video and share your comments about this idea.

Video:Angelina Jolie on getting aid to Pakistan

Video: Distruction in Swat.

Pakistan flood crisis bigger than tsunami, Haiti: UN

ISLAMABAD: The number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan could exceed the combined total in three recent megadisasters - the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake - the United Nations said Monday.

The death toll in each of those three disasters was much higher than the 1,500 people killed so far in the floods that first hit Pakistan two weeks ago. But the Pakistani government estimates that over 13 million people have been affected - two million more than the other disasters combined.

The comparison helps frame the scale of the crisis, which has overwhelmed the Pakistani government and has generated widespread anger from flood victims who have complained that aid is not reaching them quickly enough or at all.

''It looks like the number of people affected in this crisis is higher than the Haiti earthquake, the tsunami or the Pakistan earthquake, and if the toll is as high as the one given by the government, it's higher than the three of them combined,'' Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Associated Press.

The UN has provided a lower number of people who have been affected in Pakistan, about 6 million, but Giuliano said his organization does not dispute the government's figure. The UN number does not include the southern province of Sindh, which has been hit by floods in recent days, and the two sides have slightly different definitions of what it means to be affected.

The total number of people affected in the three other large disasters that have hit in recent years is about 11 million - 5 million in the tsunami and 3 million in each of the earthquakes - said Giuliano.

Many of the people affected by the floods, which were caused by extremely heavy monsoon rains, were located in Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Rescue workers have been unable to reach up to 600,000 people marooned in the province's Swat Valley, where many residents were still trying to recover from an intense battle between the army and the Taliban last spring, said Giuliano. Bad weather has prevented helicopters from flying to the area, which is inaccessible by ground, he said.

''All these people are in very serious need of assistance, and we are highly concerned about their situation,'' said Giuliano.

Hundreds of thousands of people have also had to flee rising floodwaters in recent days in the central and southern provinces of Punjab and Sindh as heavy rains have continued to pound parts of the country.

One affected resident, Manzoor Ahmed, said Monday that although he managed to escape floods that submerged villages and destroyed homes in Sindh, the total lack of government help meant dying may have been a better alternative.

''It would have been better if we had died in the floods as our current miserable life is much more painful,'' said Ahmed, who fled with his family from the town of Shikarpur and spent the night shivering in the rain that has continued to lash the country.

''It is very painful to see our people living without food and shelter,'' he said.

Thousands of people in the neighboring districts of Shikarpur and Sukkur camped out on roads, bridges and railway tracks - any dry ground they could find - often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and perhaps a plastic sheet to keep off the rain.

''I have no utensils. I have no food for my children. I have no money,'' said Hora Mai, 40, sitting on a rain-soaked road in Sukkur along with hundreds of other people. ''We were able to escape the floodwaters, but hunger may kill us.''

A senior government official in Sukkur, Inamullah Dhareejo, said authorities were working to set up relief camps in the district and deliver food to flood victims.

But an Associated Press reporter who traveled widely through the worst-hit areas in Sindh over the past three days saw no sign of relief camps or government assistance.

The worst floods in Pakistan's history hit the country at a time when the government is already struggling with a faltering economy and a brutal war against Taliban militants that has killed thousands of people.

The US and other international partners have stepped in to support the government by donating tens of millions of dollars and providing relief supplies and assistance.

But the UN special envoy for the disaster, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said Sunday that Pakistan will need billions of dollars more from international donors to recover from the floods, a daunting prospect at a time when the financial crisis has shrunk aid budgets in many countries. – AP

Friday, August 20, 2010

U.A.E Donations For PAKISTAN


If you are in U.A.E and wants to make a donation for the Flood victims of Pakistan, you can do so by making your contributions to :

Account # 010-3966-5,
Branch code 0907,
United Bank Limited,
Bur Dubai Branch, Dubai

News article taken from the following website:
http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=1093361597
The flooding in Pakistan is ''a global disaster, a global challenge.
Pakistan is facing a slow-motion Tsunami.

Ban Ki-moon,the UN Secretary-General.

SIGHTS OF DESTRUCTION.

Global Warming - The actual cause behind Pakistan' Catastrphie.



The floods in Pakistan will be distinguished in history not just as possibly the worst humanitarian crisis of the age, but as the first great ''natural'' disaster attributable to rising greenhouse gases. ''There's no doubt that clearly the climate change is … a major contributing factor,'' declared Dr Ghassem Asrar, the director of the World Climate Research Program and the World Meteorological Organisation.

Extreme weather events will become more common as climate change bites, writes Jo Chandler.

'If this is not God's wrath, what is?'' asks 40-year-old taxi driver Bakht Zada, from Madyan in Pakistan's north-west. His life's work was lost in the floods. On the BBC World News channel, a grim-faced correspondent in Islamabad stands under a black umbrella against grey skies, and recounts a horror story.

One month after it started pouring rain, a fifth of Pakistan is under water. About 20 million people - close to the entire Australian population - have been washed from their homes, their life's labours with them. About half remain in desperate need - camped on levees, lacking food, drinking water, shelter, medicine. Foreign governments have been slow to rouse in response, finding urgency only now, world citizens trailing meanly in their wake.

The loss of property is catastrophic. ''It is as if a neutron bomb exploded overhead but, instead of killing the people and leaving their houses intact, it piled trees upon the houses and swept away the villages and crops and animals, leaving the people alive,'' said a Punjab farmer and writer, Daniyal Mueenuddin, in The New York Times.

There are 1600 dead, not so many in the statistics of disasters. But with disease brewing in the filthy water, the toll will grow - probably not spectacularly enough to garner headlines. In the long-term, there are fears the fragile nation's entire economy may be beyond salvage.

In aid parlance, they call this a slow-onset disaster, which makes it difficult to ''market'' to potential donors. Just another in the series of unfortunate, unprecedented events conspiring to shape this catastrophe, which climate modellers have been forewarning in the abstract for years, and which meteorologists could see brewing in reality for weeks. It was no surprise.

Against this backdrop, it is instructive to absorb a couple of figures from an analysis produced by Oxfam International last year. In the past decade, each year about 250 million people around the world have been hit by climate-related disasters.

Within five years, by 2015, environmental degradation and an increasingly volatile climate are expected to inflate casualties by 50 per cent. Each year an average of 375 million men, women and children will have their lives or their livelihoods taken by a change in the weather. Modelling to imagine the future is never an exact science - the numbers are fluid but the trajectory is unequivocal.

Now apply another layer of numbers. The total the world spent on humanitarian aid was $14.2 billion in 2006. By 2015, three times that figure will be required to come close to answering the escalating need.

Where do you find the money to answer such need? You probably don't, admits Andrew Hewett, the executive director of Oxfam Australia. ''We will not be able to cope - the system is under huge stress and strain even now.''

Pakistan is the nightmare, the harbinger of a raw, new reality, compelling governments and agencies with humanitarian missions to rethink how they operate in a needier, more temperamental world.

In the international media and science communities there is vigorous debate over the claim - by a growing chorus of climate experts - that the floods in Pakistan will be distinguished in history not just as possibly the worst humanitarian crisis of the age, but as the first great ''natural'' disaster attributable to rising greenhouse gases. ''There's no doubt that clearly the climate change is … a major contributing factor,'' declared Dr Ghassem Asrar, the director of the World Climate Research Program and the World Meteorological Organisation.

Scientists are usually more comfortable with trends and prognostications than with cause and effect - most would never ascribe a single weather event to climate change. Which makes the declarations of Asrar and similar ones from other experts all the more remarkable.

But in a sense this debate is a sideshow. What is clear, the scientists say, is that the floods in Pakistan - and the fires in Russia, the mudslides in China, the droughts in sub-Saharan Africa - are enunciations of scenarios climate forecasters have long predicted. The ''unprecedented sequence of extreme weather'' over the past month match climate projections, the WMO says. This is what global warming looks like, say climate experts at NASA.

For years the apocryphal warnings have been laid out in the scientific journals and in sober economic analyses. Global warming would super-saturate monsoons, extend droughts, breathe fury into wildfires and frenzy into hurricanes and cyclones.

A study published in Science (Magazine)in 2006 found the level of heavy rainfall in the monsoon over India had more than doubled in the past 50 years, and the authors predicted increased disaster potential from heavy flooding. The human consequences of such events have also been explicitly spelt out. Drought, floods, violent winds, crop failures and the like all loom as triggers for massive human migration and ''extended conflict, social disruption, war, essentially, over much of the world for many decades'', in the words of Lord Nicholas Stern, the former World Bank chief economist who laid out the social and economic costs of warming in his report for the British government in 2006.

Taxi driver Bakht Zada may never know whether to raise his prayers to God or his fist to polluting human industry. But overwhelmingly scientists, relief agencies and strategic experts tell us to pay close heed to Pakistan's devastation - it is the shape of things to come.

Unlike a tsunami or an earthquake, extreme weather events often send strong warnings of their approach days, weeks, even months in advance. In 2008, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies looked at the forecasts for a brewing, ugly monsoon over West Africa and launched its first pre-emptive appeal for a flood yet to happen. When the waters came, as predicted, there was at least some readiness for them.

In the same year, with storms brewing through the Caribbean, forewarned Red Cross volunteers in Haiti worked around the clock evacuating people and setting up first aid and relief. As limited as these efforts were, they reflected a shift in thinking about disaster response, with the recognition that pre-emptive action would always be more effective than waiting for the aftermath.

Better disaster preparedness and prevention was crucial, the IFRC said when it released the latest World Disasters Report last year. It calculated that nearly 60 per cent of disaster funds in 2008 went into answering the effects of events linked to climate change - floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts - many of which would have given meteorological notice. ''We can do better if we seek out risks before they happen … capitalise on existing know-how and resources to refocus disaster response onto prevention,'' said Mohammed Omer Mukhier, the head of disaster policy at the IFRC.

This message was powerfully reiterated by Ghassem Asrar this week when he said that researchers had modelled the atmospheric currents that brought the rains to Pakistan and the heat into Russia weeks before they arrived. Climate scientists must urgently look into ways to better read and broadcast the atmospheric signals, he said. Leading scientists gathered in Colorado last week to try to do just that.

''Precise local information on the evolving climate and how it fits into the longer-term picture remains insufficient in many of the most vulnerable parts of the world,'' said the chief of Britain's Met Office, Peter Stott. ''There is no time to waste if we are going to equip societies to better cope with the severity of weather in a changing climate.''

As scientists work to fine-tune their forecasting, governments and agencies must invest an equally urgent effort into both speedier, better co-ordinated response systems, and into the shift to preparedness, says Dr Peter McCawley, a development economist and disaster specialist at the Australian National University. This requires a ''paradigm shift'' - investing in building up local institutions and talking to communities about risks. ''It means moving from international and national response after the event to local action before it. It also involves a shift in power, which is why it will be difficult to persuade people to do it.''

The second critical step, he says, is to streamline response to recognise ''need for speed''. Cash is a powerful first-response tool, but it still gets badly stuck in bureaucratic systems. Six months after the Haiti disaster, only 10 per cent of money pledged by the international community to help had been disbursed.

''What's needed is a range of levers,'' says Hewett, who identifies four key threads to better answering the next emergencies. He echoes McCawley on the need for more resources, increased investment in local preparedness, and reforms to the international system - ''tackling some hard issues about getting better co-ordination, better leadership''. Hewett adds to these ''more risk reduction - all the arguments about reducing greenhouse emissions and investing in climate change adaptations''.

But to achieve this range of responses, aid donors - whether they are governments or citizens - have to also shift their mindset, be persuaded to put their money into programs stockpiling emergency supplies, drawing up disaster plans, educating communities and setting up early warning systems.

Strengthening communities to withstand wild weather will have to be built into the humanitarian groundwork, alongside things like building schools, clinics, water and power supplies. Part of the tragedy of Pakistan is that most of this critical infrastructure will have to be rebuilt from ground zero.

The head of Caritas Australia, Jack de Groot, illustrates with the story of a small community in north-west Pakistan. Caritas and local partners had installed latrines for 70 per cent of households; 75 per cent had access to safe drinking water; 90 per cent could access power through micro-hydro plants. Now it is all pretty much gone, along with 947 homes and six schools.

''It is very grim,'' de Groot says. Once again, the poorest and most vulnerable of communities lose not only their homes and services, but potentially their basic human rights and protections. It's disheartening, but ''what do you do? You recognise that these are human beings, with needs and rights, and you respond.''

The flooding in Pakistan is ''a global disaster, a global challenge. Pakistan is facing a slow-motion tsunami'', the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said yesterday at a meeting in New York. The forum wrung pledges from nations of another $180.5 million, largely leveraged out of fears that a failure to deliver relief would give terrorists more power in the destabilised region.

Four years ago Professor Alan Dupont, now the director of the Centre for International Security Studies at Sydney University, co-authored a paper for the Lowy Institute on climate change and security, Heating Up the Planet. It sought to highlight the devastating security implications of changing climate.

Whether the Pakistan floods can be blamed on rising greenhouse gases, Dupont can't and won't guess. But is this the kind of event he was writing about? ''Absolutely,'' he says. ''One of the concerns now is that perhaps the impact of these events might be even wider than we thought. The science over the past four years is much stronger. It's pretty clear that large swathes of the planet are vulnerable.''

Climate change raises fundamental questions of human security, survival, and the stability of nation states, Dupont argues. It will contribute to destabilising, unregulated population movements through Asia and the Pacific. ''Where climate change coincides with other transnational challenges to security, such as terrorism or pandemic diseases, or adds to pre-existing ethnic and social tensions, then the impact will be magnified.'' Pakistan fits all the flashpoint criteria.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/pakistan-floods-the-harbinger-of-a-raw-new-reality-20100820-138x6.html


Actual Pakistan flood death toll unknown -UN envoy

* Pledges in UN aid appeal for $459 million hit 70 percent

* UN says it plans to revise aid appeal soon

By Louis Charbonneau
Fri Aug 20, 2010 4:57pm EDT


UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 (Reuters) - The actual number of people killed by the massive flooding in Pakistan remains unknown because large areas of the country are inaccessible, Islamabad's U.N. envoy said on Friday.

The official death toll is around 1,500 but the true number of people killed in the disaster may turn out to be higher, Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon told the U.N. General Assembly at the end of a two-day conference on aid for Pakistan.

"We don't yet know how many are dead and how many have perished," he said. "We can only hold our breath and hope that the casualty figures have been fewer."

About one third of Pakistan has been hit by floods spawned by torrential rainfall. More than 4 million Pakistanis have been left homeless by nearly three weeks of floods.

Haroon thanked members of the 192-nation assembly for their pledges and statements of support in what he called "one of the greatest calamities ever to befall mankind."

Nine days after the United Nations launched an emergency appeal for $459 million in aid to Pakistan to cover its needs for the next three months, nearly 70 percent of the requested money has been pledged, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"It's not bad for a normal disaster, but this isn't a normal disaster," Holmes said. "But money's still coming in."

The United States led a stream of new aid pledges for flood-stricken Pakistan on Thursday, promising a further $60 million to rectify a humanitarian response that has been criticized as too slow. [ID:nN1997179]

That brought Washington's aid commitments to Pakistan up to more than $150 million, making it the single biggest donor to Pakistan in the current crisis.

Other countries followed the U.S. lead in pledging more funds. British Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell, who called the international response so far to the Pakistani floods "woefully inadequate," said Britain was doubling its contribution to nearly $100 million.

Speaking for the European Union, Belgian Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere promised a further 30 million euros ($38.5 million) on top of 110 million euros already committed.

Holmes said that the United Nations would soon revise its appeal to cover a six-month period. He added that he expected a pledging conference to be held later in the year once the long-term costs of reconstruction become clear.

"As you said, those costs will be in the billions of dollars," he said.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Thursday acknowledged that the initial aid response had been too slow due to a lack of awareness about the scale of the disaster, but said he was now satisfied with the pledges.

(Editing by Will Dunham)

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Angelina Jolie urges aid for flood-hit Pakistan


Angelina Jolie has donated 100,000 dollars to the flood relief effort in Pakistan, according to reports.

The actress, who is a UN Goodwill Ambassador, has given the equivalent of £64,000 of her own money while calling on her fans to help raise funds, news agency AFP is reported to have said.

Her donation is being made through the United Nations, which has described Pakistan's worst humanitarian crisis as one of the world's biggest disasters, with some 20 million victims.

The Salt star's previous donations include one million dollars (£640,000) to help earthquake survivors in Haiti earlier this year.

At the London premiere of her new thriller Salt, Angelina urged people to donate, saying: "It is getting hard for people - they see Haiti, they see these other events ... and they get exhausted by the time another big one rolls around."

CANADIAN DONATIONS FOR PAKISTAN.




If You are in Canada and wants to make a donation for Pakistan's' Flood victims via UNICEF, Please follow the directions:

To donate in denominations of $5, text 'GIVE' to 45678. Proceeds go to UNICEF.ca to fund flood victims in Pakistan. And also:
https://secure.unicef.ca/portal/SmartDefault.aspx?at=1380&CID=127

A NEW FLOOD MAP

Dear Friends & Family Members,

Today is the time to donate. We , as a community have been blessed by God in every aspect. It is our duty to give back whatever ,we can to these people in desperate times.
Donate whatever is possible, may it be your time, your effort, your money or the articles sitting at your home-that you don't use any more.


EVERYTHING IS NEEDED-----EVERY EFFORT IS WELCOME


Giving by nature is of two types

01.The monetary Giving

02. Non monetary Giving

MONETARY DONATIONS:
a list of recommended food items that you can buy from market & pack yourself & give to the Charity organization of your choice.

1. Dates
2. Water Bottles
3. Potato Chips bags
4. Sugar cubes bags
5. Sweets
6. Daal (pulses)-non cooked
7. Rice(non cooked)
8.Potato (un cooked)
8.Chlorine Tablets for water purification
9. Mospel liquid
10. Cotton sheet(mul mul) for water filtration
---05 meters.



NON MONETARY DONATIONS:
a list of non monetary donation you can easily make (from your home without spending a dime)...........

1. Your old clothing
2. Your used dinner plates & steel glass
3. Old Bed sheets
4. Plastic floor sheet
5. Plastic transparent sheet for rain
6. Used shoes for young & old
7. Old water container- jug
8. Used handis,pots & fri-pans
9. Candles
10. Match boxes


Recommended: Please watch the video by fakhr e alam , he gives a fine demonstration about ,how to donate & what to donate , please watch the video.

UN fears for children in Pakistan floods

UN fears for children in Pakistan floods

CHILDRENS OF THE FLOOD





Fakhir e alam, Relif Effort: A Step in the Right Direction

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The cyclone that broke Pakistan’s back


Lets don't forget the lessons from the past..........
an article from Herald tribune,Pakistan

The writer is the Frederick S Pardee Professor of Global Public Policy
at Boston University adil.najam@tribune.com.pk



it wiped out villages. Destroyed crops. Over 3.6 million people were directly affected. Most estimates suggest that half a million died; some suggest as many as one million perished. Nearly 85 per cent of the area was destroyed. Three months after the catastrophe some 75 per cent of the population was receiving food from relief workers.

It happened in Pakistan. Yet few Pakistanis even know of it by name. Fewer still remember that it eventually contributed to Pakistan’s break-up. The 1970 Cyclone Bhola hit then East Pakistan on November 12, 1970.

Historians tend to agree that although there were many other forces at work, the devastation caused by the cyclone and the widespread view that the government had mismanaged the relief efforts and West Pakistan had generally shown an attitude of neglect, contributed to high levels of anti-West Pakistan feeling, a sweeping victory for the Awami League, and eventually the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh.

Such, then, are the forces of nature. And such are the forces of history.

As we hear newspaper headlines proclaiming the historic magnitude and devastation wrought by the floods on our plains, it is worth remembering that 40 years ago The New York Times was describing another calamity in Pakistan as the “worst catastrophe of the century”. Much more importantly, we should pay close attention to the lessons of history, and the lessons of nature.

The lesson of how policy mismanagement led to public dissatisfaction and eventually contributed to national dismemberment. Of course, this is not an entirely parallel situation since so much more had already gone wrong in the East Pakistan case — and the cyclone was a contributor to, not the cause, of how history unfolded — but Bhola’s lessons should not be lost on the politicians, policy-makers and people of Pakistan.

There is a reason why disasters require national solidarity. Without it, they can become even more disastrous. Deeply buried fissures in the social fabric can burst forth in volcanic anger. As we look around at the political, policy and citizen response to the current floods, one sees too many who wish to turn disaster into a political opportunity. Those who do would be well advised to remember Bhola. Indeed, we would all be well advised to remember Bhola.

History is not a predictive science. And I do not believe that there is a real parallel between the two situations.

But I do believe that there are important lessons to learn from our own mistakes. For the sake of our present, if not of our past, let us resolve not to make the same mistakes again. Let us not forget what is the real lesson of Bhola in 1970, as of so many other tragedies: dissatisfaction in times of crisis can be a force of agony, and political catastrophe can sometimes grow from seeds sown in natural disaster.

..........................................................................................................................................................

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18th, 2010.



Do what you are meant to do.
help..........
THE EDHI FOUNDATION,

we all trust, lets donate.....
Make you payable to the:

Abdul Sattar Edhi Foundation


Karachi

Askari Bank, Jodia bazar branch,
Karachi.

PKR Account No: 011650011-4
USD Account No: 230213000836

Lahore
Muslim Commercial Bank,
Account No:

Islamabad
Muslim Commercial Bank, Aabpara branch,
Aabpara, Islamabad.
Account No: 5626-2

or

If you are outside Pakistan, make your donations to:

Edhi International Foundation U.K.

Lloyds Bank TSB
357 Regents Park Road, London, N3 1DN
Account No: 01466755
Sort Code: 30-99-86
BIC: LOYDGB-21043
IBAN: GB55-LOYD-309986-01466755

Habib Bank AG Zurich
2 Baker Street London W1M2DD
Account No: 14102680
Sort Code: 60-91-34
Swift Code: HBZUGB2L



Satellite Images reveal the full extent of the Pakistan floods






The image below was taken on August 15, 2010, while the one above was snapped one year ago. The blue patches show the extend of the flooding, which have left 20 million people homeless

Political and Economic long term implementation of floods




Please read the full post............

Tuesday, August 17, 2010




IDEAS
that can save lives.......


With the grace of Almighty Allah , we as a nation have been extremely lucky, as we have seen lot less casualties in regards to the material damage which has occurred, Yet the greatest challenge we face as a nation is to bring back the livelihood of the people who have lost everything during this catastrophe.
Although the livelihood development of the homeless people, shall be a long term goal for our nation, the delivery of food & clean water to the flood hit victim is the challenge that stands in front of us of right now.

According to a UN report 3.5 Million children lives are at stack simply because of not having drinkable water.


In my own opinion, only radical ideas brilliant - out of the box thinking can change the situation we find our self stuck in ,and yes this is my firm belief that only the young generation can take this nation out of the ditch we find ourselves in.

If you have an idea that you believe can save lives, or perhaps can lessen the misery of these unfortunate people, Please share them on this portal, who knows that you just might save a single life, would not that be like saving all of the humanity.

I would start this post by sharing an idea that might just save hundreds of lives,

LIFESAVER BOTTLE TECHNOLOGY
This product is made on the state of the art "nanotechnology" what is does is that it can turn germ infested muddy rain water into 99.9% germ free clean water. this is a proven technology & this bottle can purify 6000 liter of water without a filter change.
We have 450,000 families left homeless after this flood, so the math is not so difficult if you are guessing how many of these bottles are required.
This invention can save millions of lives, without a doubt but their is only one hitch, the cost of each bottle is 130 UK pounds.