United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will travel to Pakistan next week following historic deadly flooding to see “the areas most impacted by this unprecedented climate catastrophe,” a UN spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Guterres is expected to arrive in Islamabad in the first week of September, the spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
UN chief will visit flood-hit areas of Pakistan and meet the survivors.
Earlier in the day, Pakistan and the United Nations issued a flash appeal of $160 million to help Pakistan cope with catastrophic floods.
In a video message, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that Pakistan was awash in suffering.
“The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding.”
The UN chief noted that over 1,000 have been killed so far in what he called a “climate catastrophe.”
His statement came as Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and the UN jointly launched “2022 Pakistan Floods Response Plan (FRP)” simultaneously in Islamabad and Geneva on Tuesday, urging the international community to support the government of Pakistan in scaling up and expanding its relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction of areas battered by historic monsoon deluge.
Addressing the ceremony, Bilawal said Pakistan need the international community’s prompt and immediate support in stepping up and expanding its efforts to rebuild and reconstruct the devastated areas and other infrastructure.
He said that the international community must share the responsibility of supporting those countries that had been facing the threats of global warming and climate change.
The foreign minister while explaining the magnitude of the disaster caused by floods said the damages during the recent calamity exceeded the damages caused during the 2010 floods.
Pakistan had been a ground zero for the century’s existential climate change and global warming threats as about 72 districts and around 33 million population had been badly affected, Bilawal said. More than 1000 lives have been lost, hundreds of others were injured, besides millions of houses damaged, livestock and crops were wiped out, he added.
Pakistan had been facing the direct consequences of global warming and in the front line of such devastation wrought by the climatic changes, he added.
He said the disaster was colossal and the flood-hit areas were lacking critical basics.
The current cycle of super flooding, the foreign minister said, shows extreme weather patterns. Unprecedented levels of cloud bursts and torrential rains had triggered widespread devastation, urban flooding, river floods and landslides, resulting in the loss of human life, livelihoods and livestock.
Terming year’s super floods as a climate calamity-induced destruction, he said “what we are facing today has been no above average monsoon. It is an entirely new level of climate-led catastrophe.”
The foreign minister said the rainfall in Pakistan since mid-June had been equivalent to three times the 30-year national average.
