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[guardian.co.uk > News > World news > Pakistan]
Impact of Pakistan floods as bad as 1947 partition, says prime minister
Yousaf Raza Gilani calls on population to rise to flooding challenge as anger grows among 20 million people left homeless
David Batty and Saeed Shah in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 August 2010 12.09 BST
Article history
{A Pakistani mother carries her children through flood water in Muzaffargarh city, Punjab province. Photograph: K.M.Chaudary/AP}
Pakistan's government has compared the impact of the country's devastating floods to the country's partition from India as it revealed more than 20 million people had been made homeless by the disaster.
The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said the country faced challenges similar to those during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-majority Pakistan in which about 500,000 people were killed in mass violence and thousands of families were torn apart as 10 million refugees crossed the new border.
Gilani said 20 million people were now homeless and called on Pakistanis to rise to the occasion, amid growing fears of social unrest or even a military takeover following the government's shambolic response to the floods.
"The nation faced the situation successfully at that time [of the partition] and inshallah [God willing] we will emerge successful in this test," he said.
About 1,600 people have died in the floods and aid agencies expect the toll to rise due to outbreaks of deadly waterborne diseases. A case of cholera was confirmed today in Mingora, the main town in Swat Valley in the north-east of the country, and UN aid workers are taking proactive measures to try to avert a crisis.
A UN humanitarian operations spokesman, Maurizio Giuliano, said at least 36,000 people believed to have potentially fatal acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) were being treated for cholera.
"Given that there is a significant risk of cholera, which is a deadly and dangerous and a potentially epidemic disease, instead of focusing on testing, everyone who has AWD is being treated for cholera," he told Reuters.
Aid agencies have warned that 6 million children are at risk of life-threatening diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition and pneumonia. Stagnant flood plains in densely populated, poverty-stricken urban areas may become breeding grounds for cholera, mosquitos and malaria.
A spokesman for the UK Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) said: "It's extremely worrying that we are seeing the confirmation of our fears.
"We now have to work very hard to prevent the spread of the disease. The danger is that cholera is both deadly and spreads incredibly easily. Unfortunately the circumstances in Pakistan are against us."
The floods, triggered by torrential monsoon downpours just over two weeks ago, engulfed Pakistan's Indus river basin. Relief operations have yet to reach an estimated 6 million people, fuelling long-held grievances in the flood-hit areas. Villages have been wiped away. Some people only have a patch of land to stand on. But the impact of the disaster will be felt throughout Pakistan's population of 170 million.
President Asif Ali Zardari, who has drawn criticism for going abroad to meet the leaders of Britain and France as the crisis unfolded, today vowed to rebuild the devastated country.
"Despondency is forbidden in our religion. We consider it as a test from Allah for us. This is a test for us and for you," he told flood victims at a relief camp. "We will try to meet all your wishes. We will build a new house for you. We will build a new Pakistan."
Fears that Zardari could be overthrown – possibly through an intervention by the army – have grown as rescuers continue to struggle to help the millions of people affected.
Najam Sethi, editor of the weekly Friday Times, said: "The powers that be, that is the military and bureaucratic establishment, are mulling the formation of a national government, with or without the PPP [the ruling Pakistan People's party]. I know this is definitely being discussed. There is a perception in the army that you need good governance to get out of the economic crisis and there is no good governance."
Other analysts say a military coup is unlikely because the army's priority is fighting the Taliban insurgency, and taking over during a disaster makes no sense.
In Sindh province, flood victims have complained of looting and there are signs of increasing lawlessness.
Gilani and the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif vowed to work together to tackle the crisis.
"Politics at this time is haram [forbidden by Islam]," Sharif said in a joint news conference.
The agricultural heartland has been wiped out, which will cause spiralling food prices and shortages. Many roads and irrigation canals have been destroyed, along with electricity supply infrastructure.
"The immediate risk is one of food riots," said Marie Lall, an Asia expert at Chatham House. "There is already great resentment in Swat and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where people had to be cleared during the government offensive. Now there is the threat of social unrest as various factions, families and ethnic groups compete with each other in the event of a breakdown in government."
The World Bank estimates that crops worth $1bn (£640m) have been ruined and the Pakistani finance secretary warned today that the disaster would cut the country's growth in half.
The government may have to spend $1.7bn on reconstruction, and has said it will have to divert expenditure from badly needed development programmes.
Fresh downpours could bring more destruction and displacement. Scattered showers with heavy downpours are expected in the upper north-west, upper Punjab, parts of the north and Kashmir over the next 24 hours, according to Pakistan's meteorological department.
[guardian.co.uk > Environment > Oceans]
Environment cuts: fight to preserve the health of the seas
Ecologists warn cuts will hamper efforts to set up marine conservation areas and safely build offshore windfarms
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
The Guardian, Saturday 14 August 2010
Article history
{Threatened: the seahorse Hippocampus guttulatus in a sea grass bed in British waters. Photograph: Lin Baldock/Natural England/PA}
Plans to set up a network of marine conservation areas and safely build vast offshore windfarms and deep-sea oil rigs around the UK could be hampered or irreparably damaged by spending cuts, senior ecologists have warned.
They fear that 40% cuts in the government's environment funding will hit crucial research programmes into the health of Britain's seas at a time of unprecedented pressures on marine habitats.
Conservationists believe the cuts will severely affect a marine research centre in Aberdeen, an outpost of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), where 30 scientists and support staff lead crucial surveys and scientific studies on fish stocks, marine biodiversity and the seabed around Britain.
One senior government adviser said that this would leave the UK exposed to legal action and potentially the loss of funding from the European commission for breaching its duties under EU birds and habitats directives, which require ministers to protect vulnerable species such as dolphins and sea birds.
Legal action and uncertainties about the suitability of sites could delay the offshore renewables programme and cost industry and the taxpayer more in future. "It's a double bang: it gets in the way of development and if we make mistakes we'll be clobbered by the [EU] commission. We'll get whopping great penalties, to say nothing of the reputational damage," he said.
Energy companies are installing thousands of offshore wind turbines around the British coast, while the oil industry, led by BP, is pushing for licences to drill test wells in deep but poorly studied waters off western Scotland and Shetland.
Under legislation passed by the Labour government, the UK is also committed to setting up a network of marine conservation zones, dedicated to preserving the most vulnerable and significant areas of sea, as the first step towards introducing marine protection areas where tough controls on industry, fishing and pollution will be enforced.
Stuart Housden, director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, said the JNCC's work in Aberdeen played a vital role in establishing where to set up marine protection zones and where it was safest to build offshore windfarms or tidal and wave power machines, or to sink oil wells.
"These are very expensive and difficult to do, and these processes have already been starved of funds, but at the same time governments in Edinburgh and London are very anxious to see opportunities for offshore renewables and oil and gas pursued with vigour," he said. "But to do that we need to have good environmental assessments; we need to know what's out there and where to declare the best protected areas. They're trying to cut corners and save money when the pressures to do developments at sea are so fast and furious, and before the best sites are identified, with serious damage potentially being done."
[guardian.co.uk > News > World news > Pakistan]
Impact of Pakistan floods as bad as 1947 partition, says prime minister
Yousaf Raza Gilani calls on population to rise to flooding challenge as anger grows among 20 million people left homeless
David Batty and Saeed Shah in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 August 2010 12.09 BST
Article history
{A Pakistani mother carries her children through flood water in Muzaffargarh city, Punjab province. Photograph: K.M.Chaudary/AP}
Pakistan's government has compared the impact of the country's devastating floods to the country's partition from India as it revealed more than 20 million people had been made homeless by the disaster.
The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said the country faced challenges similar to those during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-majority Pakistan in which about 500,000 people were killed in mass violence and thousands of families were torn apart as 10 million refugees crossed the new border.
Gilani said 20 million people were now homeless and called on Pakistanis to rise to the occasion, amid growing fears of social unrest or even a military takeover following the government's shambolic response to the floods.
"The nation faced the situation successfully at that time [of the partition] and inshallah [God willing] we will emerge successful in this test," he said.
About 1,600 people have died in the floods and aid agencies expect the toll to rise due to outbreaks of deadly waterborne diseases. A case of cholera was confirmed today in Mingora, the main town in Swat Valley in the north-east of the country, and UN aid workers are taking proactive measures to try to avert a crisis.
A UN humanitarian operations spokesman, Maurizio Giuliano, said at least 36,000 people believed to have potentially fatal acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) were being treated for cholera.
"Given that there is a significant risk of cholera, which is a deadly and dangerous and a potentially epidemic disease, instead of focusing on testing, everyone who has AWD is being treated for cholera," he told Reuters.
Aid agencies have warned that 6 million children are at risk of life-threatening diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition and pneumonia. Stagnant flood plains in densely populated, poverty-stricken urban areas may become breeding grounds for cholera, mosquitos and malaria.
A spokesman for the UK Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) said: "It's extremely worrying that we are seeing the confirmation of our fears.
"We now have to work very hard to prevent the spread of the disease. The danger is that cholera is both deadly and spreads incredibly easily. Unfortunately the circumstances in Pakistan are against us."
The floods, triggered by torrential monsoon downpours just over two weeks ago, engulfed Pakistan's Indus river basin. Relief operations have yet to reach an estimated 6 million people, fuelling long-held grievances in the flood-hit areas. Villages have been wiped away. Some people only have a patch of land to stand on. But the impact of the disaster will be felt throughout Pakistan's population of 170 million.
President Asif Ali Zardari, who has drawn criticism for going abroad to meet the leaders of Britain and France as the crisis unfolded, today vowed to rebuild the devastated country.
"Despondency is forbidden in our religion. We consider it as a test from Allah for us. This is a test for us and for you," he told flood victims at a relief camp. "We will try to meet all your wishes. We will build a new house for you. We will build a new Pakistan."
Fears that Zardari could be overthrown – possibly through an intervention by the army – have grown as rescuers continue to struggle to help the millions of people affected.
Najam Sethi, editor of the weekly Friday Times, said: "The powers that be, that is the military and bureaucratic establishment, are mulling the formation of a national government, with or without the PPP [the ruling Pakistan People's party]. I know this is definitely being discussed. There is a perception in the army that you need good governance to get out of the economic crisis and there is no good governance."
Other analysts say a military coup is unlikely because the army's priority is fighting the Taliban insurgency, and taking over during a disaster makes no sense.
In Sindh province, flood victims have complained of looting and there are signs of increasing lawlessness.
Gilani and the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif vowed to work together to tackle the crisis.
"Politics at this time is haram [forbidden by Islam]," Sharif said in a joint news conference.
The agricultural heartland has been wiped out, which will cause spiralling food prices and shortages. Many roads and irrigation canals have been destroyed, along with electricity supply infrastructure.
"The immediate risk is one of food riots," said Marie Lall, an Asia expert at Chatham House. "There is already great resentment in Swat and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where people had to be cleared during the government offensive. Now there is the threat of social unrest as various factions, families and ethnic groups compete with each other in the event of a breakdown in government."
The World Bank estimates that crops worth $1bn (£640m) have been ruined and the Pakistani finance secretary warned today that the disaster would cut the country's growth in half.
The government may have to spend $1.7bn on reconstruction, and has said it will have to divert expenditure from badly needed development programmes.
Fresh downpours could bring more destruction and displacement. Scattered showers with heavy downpours are expected in the upper north-west, upper Punjab, parts of the north and Kashmir over the next 24 hours, according to Pakistan's meteorological department.
[guardian.co.uk > Environment > Oceans]
Environment cuts: fight to preserve the health of the seas
Ecologists warn cuts will hamper efforts to set up marine conservation areas and safely build offshore windfarms
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
The Guardian, Saturday 14 August 2010
Article history
{Threatened: the seahorse Hippocampus guttulatus in a sea grass bed in British waters. Photograph: Lin Baldock/Natural England/PA}
Plans to set up a network of marine conservation areas and safely build vast offshore windfarms and deep-sea oil rigs around the UK could be hampered or irreparably damaged by spending cuts, senior ecologists have warned.
They fear that 40% cuts in the government's environment funding will hit crucial research programmes into the health of Britain's seas at a time of unprecedented pressures on marine habitats.
Conservationists believe the cuts will severely affect a marine research centre in Aberdeen, an outpost of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), where 30 scientists and support staff lead crucial surveys and scientific studies on fish stocks, marine biodiversity and the seabed around Britain.
One senior government adviser said that this would leave the UK exposed to legal action and potentially the loss of funding from the European commission for breaching its duties under EU birds and habitats directives, which require ministers to protect vulnerable species such as dolphins and sea birds.
Legal action and uncertainties about the suitability of sites could delay the offshore renewables programme and cost industry and the taxpayer more in future. "It's a double bang: it gets in the way of development and if we make mistakes we'll be clobbered by the [EU] commission. We'll get whopping great penalties, to say nothing of the reputational damage," he said.
Energy companies are installing thousands of offshore wind turbines around the British coast, while the oil industry, led by BP, is pushing for licences to drill test wells in deep but poorly studied waters off western Scotland and Shetland.
Under legislation passed by the Labour government, the UK is also committed to setting up a network of marine conservation zones, dedicated to preserving the most vulnerable and significant areas of sea, as the first step towards introducing marine protection areas where tough controls on industry, fishing and pollution will be enforced.
Stuart Housden, director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, said the JNCC's work in Aberdeen played a vital role in establishing where to set up marine protection zones and where it was safest to build offshore windfarms or tidal and wave power machines, or to sink oil wells.
"These are very expensive and difficult to do, and these processes have already been starved of funds, but at the same time governments in Edinburgh and London are very anxious to see opportunities for offshore renewables and oil and gas pursued with vigour," he said. "But to do that we need to have good environmental assessments; we need to know what's out there and where to declare the best protected areas. They're trying to cut corners and save money when the pressures to do developments at sea are so fast and furious, and before the best sites are identified, with serious damage potentially being done."