Authorities in Pakistan’s Punjab province have undertaken a massive evacuation effort, relocating more than one million people from their homes this week. The evacuations are a response to the most severe flooding the region has witnessed in forty years, which has caused widespread havoc across hundreds of villages and submerged critical grain crops essential to the nation’s food supply.
The human toll is starkly visible in villages like Qadirabad, where residents were seen wading through chest-deep water after the River Chenab burst its banks. The flooding was so sudden that many, like labourer Nadeem Iqbal, spent terrified nights awake, fleeing with their children as water levels rose rapidly. These scenes are being repeated across the province, which is not only home to over half of Pakistan’s population but also its agricultural core.
Officials have pointed to a key factor exacerbating the natural disaster: the release of water from filled Indian dams into the three rivers that flow into Pakistani Punjab—the Ravi, Sutlej, and Chenab. This additional volume of water has overwhelmed river capacities and flood defenses, transforming heavy monsoon rains into a regional catastrophe that transcends borders.
The economic implications are profound. The inundation of vast agricultural lands threatens the production of wheat, rice, and cotton, posing a significant risk to both local livelihoods and the country’s broader food security. The event underscores the extreme vulnerability of key economic sectors to climate-induced disasters and complex international water politics.
