Another 54 people died in Pakistan in a 24-hour span earlier this week, bringing the official death toll of the extreme rains and flooding to 1,481. The unprecedented monsoon rains submerged one-third of the country — including much of the nation’s main agricultural region — and left 33 million homeless. Estimates of the total costs of the flooding continue to rise, and multiple intersecting and potentially compounding crises loom — including food shortages for both people and livestock, the spread of waterborne and mosquito-vectored diseases, and a dire shortage of maternity care — in addition to the collective trauma and economic devastation in a nation responsible for a negligible amount of historic climate pollution. Authorities also scrambled over the weekend to fortify flood protections around a power station supplying electricity to millions of people in Sindh province, which has already received 466% more rain than average — the flooding of which will travel through the Dadu district where the power station is located due to the region’s geography. More rain is expected. (AP, Democracy Now; Agriculture impact, mounting calls for aid: NPR; Livestock: Reuters; Maternity care: The Guardian; Power station: Reuters; Climate signals background: Extreme precipitation increase)
