For the past few years, climate change has been ravaging the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), from heat waves to rain, hail and snow storms to landslides, flash floods, GLOFs (glacial lake outburst floods) and forest fires. While the state has mostly focused on the casualties (especially adults) and the 'losses' suffered in terms of houses and other infrastructure destroyed, the children caught in the devastation suffer a nightmare. Making up a significant chunk of the casualties, the authorities scarcely focus on relief and rescue efforts for children. Climate change not only threatens their lives today but also their future.
Every year, climate change-induced extreme weather events claim the lives of scores of children in the province. Data from the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) shows that over the past four years, of the 1,206 people who have died due to natural or man-made disasters, just under half, or 508, fatalities were of children (peaking in 2022, when widespread floods struck). However, this data only partially covers the threats facing children, given their enhanced vulnerability to diseases.
Annual reports shared by the PDMA with The Friday Times, show that from 2021 to September 28, 2024, 80% of children lost their lives to extreme weather events such as storms, heavy rains, flash floods, and strong winds. This data did not incorporate some children who were affected by other climate change-induced effects such as heat waves, droughts, and other hazards, including secondary impacts such as smog and vector-borne diseases.
'There is no provincial-level data available with any department regarding climate change and children to estimate and inspect the direct and indirect impacts of the climate crisis,' various government reports said.
Its climate change
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, assessments of the provincial meteorological department underlined an increase in extreme weather events in the province which manifest in the form of heavy rains, extreme heat, lighter snowfall and altered weather patterns.
KP Meteorological Department Deputy Director Fahim Khan told The Friday Times that the intensity and frequency of weather events such as precipitation have been changing per their data. He pointed out that in winters, especially November and December, the slow and long precipitations have shifted to spring. Moreover, they witnessed unusual torrential rains in March and April of this year, which broke past precipitation records.
The distressing part is that we received heavy rain in a single night in the Cherat area of Nowshera district, Fahim claimed.
Climate change is not only limited to changing patterns for rainfall. They have also drastically shifted the snowfall season. In November and December last year, the region did not receive its usual fill of snowfall. It wasn't until January that the northern regions received snowfall.
After facing torrential rains in March and April, the region wilted due to an extended heatwave this year.
Rising global temperatures are not a good sign for a region considered the world's 'Third Pole', KP Met Department's deputy director said. He believed that the marginalised segments of society would be far more vulnerable to intensifying torrential rains, flash floods, and heat waves.
When the temperatures hit record highs in May 2024, Save the Children International (SCI) - a leading development organisation working for children in around 120 countries around the world, said that a third of the children worldwide were exposed to the extreme heat waves. In Pakistan, more than half the children of school-going age – about 26 million in Punjab - were locked out of their classrooms for a week when it joined a string of countries which shut down schools due to the extreme climate and a record-breaking heat wave.
Responding to disaster
Anwar Shahzad, a spokesperson for KP's PDMA department, told The Friday Times that the intensity and frequency of natural disasters, torrential rains, floods, flash floods, hailstorms and heavy rainfall has been increasing annually. He conceded that children are also victims of these calamities, especially those under five.
Most child deaths, he said, occur during the monsoon season. He said their records show that 80% of all child fatalities are tied to climate change-induced calamities such as heavy rains and flash floods, which cause roofs of houses to collapse or sweep away houses. This ratio has increased in the past seven years with an increase in rains and flash floods.
Pointing to data from the past four years, Shahzad said children are sometimes more affected than men and women in the province. With floods returning to KP, he said that from January to September this year, they had recorded 144 child deaths and 174 injuries, which suggests that 2024 could be as deadly as 2022 when, during the super floods, some 162 children were killed and another 189 were injured. In both years, child fatalities accounted for nearly half of all fatalities recorded during natural disasters in the province.
Asked about the presence of early warning systems in the province, which could perhaps help curb these fatalities, Shahzad told The Friday Times that an early warning system is in place in every district and that the assistant commissioner in every district has been providing assistance and relief goods to the affected people. However, he pointed out that year after year, they have seen growing intensity and the nature of disasters, which have created hurdles for vulnerable communities, especially in remote rural areas.
The ongoing year saw global temperatures shatter all past records, making it the hottest year in history. The United Nations (UN)-led Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted in their sixth Assessment Report that climate change-induced extreme weather events will increase in frequency and intensity in South Asia and other parts of the world.
Tears in the storm: Families grieve children lost to climate's wrath
The stories of families who lost children in this year's torrential rains and flash floods are heart-wrenching - as are those from yesteryears. The families relayed that they had no time to protect their children when the rains and floods came.
The most recent incident occurred in the last week of July. Early on the morning of July 30, at around 4am, a flash flood entered a house in a village in the Old Bazid Khel area of Darra Adam Khel, killing ten members of a family who were sleeping in the basement. Among the deceased, six were children, three were women, and two were men. Malik Abrar, the brother-in-law of the deceased, Amjad, told The Friday Times that it was a tragic incident and the entire area was overwhelmed with grief. The 70-year-old expressed his sorrow by stating that his household's present and future had been destroyed in a single night.
In the first week of August, two children under five died while their mother was injured when the roof of their room collapsed while seeking shelter from heavy rain in the Talab Khel village of Karak district. The uncle of two children, Niaz, told The Friday Times over the phone, that due to the heavy rainfall, the roof of the house collapsed at around 3pm in the afternoon. It killed five-year-old Azlaan and 18-month-old Hisham on the spot. They were rushed to a nearby hospital, but by then, it was too late.
The latest incident occurred on August 30, when heavy rainfall destroyed a mudhouse in Upper Dir district, killing 12 members of a family. They were killed early in the morning after the roof of their mudhouse collapsed.
KP's climate-stressed public health challenges
Climate change and its escalating impacts have also exacerbated KP's public health challenges, particularly when tending to children.
The provincial health department, with financial and other support from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), shared in September 2024 the "Climate Change and Health Vulnerability Assessment" (CHVA) report on health challenges. It listed rising temperatures, heat waves, erratic rainfall, floods, and glacial melt as the reasons for the growing burden of climate-sensitive diseases. It noted that these diseases include heat-related illnesses, malnutrition, respiratory problems, vector and water-borne diseases like dengue and cholera.
It stated that KP's already-strained health system is inadequately prepared for these mounting challenges. The risks for children increase further in rural areas due to poor health infrastructure and limited access to care. The report highlights a neonatal mortality rate of 41.8 per 1,000 live births, much higher than in neighbouring countries such as India and Bangladesh. These areas also suffer from low immunisation rates, with only 68% coverage for the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV-1), contributing to the vulnerability of children to preventable diseases.
In addition to lacking access to adequate health facilities, the floods of 2022 damaged some 158 health facilities across 17 of the province's 38 districts, further exacerbating service delivery issues. The report highlighted that KP has severe public health vulnerabilities when it comes to climate change-induced effects.
With approximately 18 million people at risk of climate change-related disasters such as floods, landslides, rising temperatures, and erratic rainfall, and with instances of extreme weather events expected to increase in frequency, they are poised to significantly worsen health outcomes in the province.
Lacking resources and training, KP's health system is struggling to adapt and respond to the increasing threats posed by climate change. The report highlighted the need for urgent investment in health infrastructure, workforce capacity, and climate-resilient healthcare policies to safeguard the future of KP's children.
Even though KP has emerged as among the regions to have suffered the brunt of climate change in the country, having suffered the highest number of incidents of climate disasters including the catastrophic floods in 2010 and 2022 and several smaller floods in the intervening years, the provincial CHVA document stated that the province has yet to form health policies to strengthen health resilience to climate change, and knowledge of the climate nexus has yet to be built.
In addition to the direct health impacts of climate change, they also bring a host of secondary health impacts. Waterborne diseases, including cholera and diarrhoea, are projected to rise by 10-20% by 2050, while vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue could see a 30-40% increase, especially in previously unaffected high-altitude regions. The province's already strained health system struggles to cope with these mounting challenges, leading to increased mortality and morbidity.
During an event to launch the CHVA document, Advisor to KP Chief Minister on Health Advocate Ihtisham Ali remarked that the findings were an eye-opener for all and presented a way forward for developing a climate-resilient health system in KP.
Protecting children
Since the meteorological department predicts that climate change hazards will increase and possibly intensify annually in KP, children are likely to be more vulnerable to those hazards.
When The Friday Times reached out to the KP Health Department and the KP Child Protection and Welfare Commission (KPCPWC) to seek accurate data on children who were directly or indirectly affected by or were exposed to climate change and the climate-health nexus, the two departments said they did not have the specific data.
An official of the KP Health Department told The Friday Times that they did not have any specific policy in this regard but they had shared some recommendations with policymakers and that the department is working to create a climate change cell in the department to examine and further work on children's vulnerability in the climate crisis.
The KPCPWC, a custodian of the province's children and protector of their rights, said they had established 21 child protection units in 19 districts of the province. KPCPWC Deputy Director and Chief Protection Officer Ijaz Muhammad Khan told The Friday Times that in the past 11 years, they had facilitated approximately 33,000 children under 18 years of age against different kinds of risks including corporal punishment, forced child marriages, street children forced into labour, children going missing or runaways from their homes, violence and sexual harassment. However, Ijaz said they neither had specific data on how many children were affected by climate change in the province nor in which capacity climate change creates hurdles for children. But he did concede that children in the province are vulnerable to climate change, and it has a vast impact on their health and wellbeing.
Ijaz said they coordinate closely with the PDMA and rescue missing children during disasters apart from monitoring their wellbeing in emergency shelters and relief camps.
When asked about the secondary impacts of climate change on children and their rights, particularly child marriages - as families sought to ease their financial burdens after losing their homes and life savings, children dropping out of schools in the province - after floods destroyed schools and colleges with rebuilding taking a long time - in the aftermath of the 2010 and 2022 floods, Ijaz conceded that these incidents took place. He added that the NGOs were not actively working on child-related climate change issues in the province but they were now engaged in discussions with relevant stakeholders, including NGOs, on building a climate-health nexus.
Environmental experts say that while the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has worked on building a climate change policy, unfortunately, it has yet to be integrated into every policy, leaving gaps between institutions.
Community response to disasters
The Sendai Framework highlights the importance of protecting children during disasters by implementing child-centred disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies. But in Pakistan, the government, NGOs, and private and public organisations have not followed the Sendai framework's protocols.
While government policies on climate change somehow address hazard response, there remain huge gaps between relief and rescue organisations in disasters while rescuing marginalised groups.
It is a known fact that women and children are among the worst affected in any conflict or disaster; disasters exacerbate existing vulnerabilities such as child abuse or domestic violence, said Sarah Zafar, a climate change, inequality, localisation and inclusive DRR expert.
Zafar, who works as an advocacy, media and communications manager at the global non-governmental organisation Oxfam International, told The Friday Times that climate change-induced disaster exposes children to risks such as disease, homelessness, poverty and destruction of schools such as during the 2022 floods when millions of children were forced out of schools.
Sharing Oxfam's experience from the 2022 floods in Balochistan and Sindh, Zafar said they held sessions with the communities where issues such as gender-based violence (GBV) and child marriages were discussed. They learnt that strengthening grassroots community groups was highly important in ensuring the success of any intervention. During disasters, the local response to a crisis can be ad-hoc and sometimes lacking technical skills, she said.
During the 2022 flood response, Zafar said a women's rights organisation with no experience in humanitarian work was brought on board, and they performed exceedingly well due to their strong connection with the local community. Hence, INGOs need to trust local organisations for effective humanitarian response.
Similarly, local unions and local government systems must be strengthened to provide effective grassroots responses to rescue children and women. For this, concerted efforts are needed at the provincial and federal levels.
Zafar said that climate change is the biggest threat to Pakistan's future, and to tackle it, we must not only improve local community responses to disasters but also empower people at the grassroots level to respond to climate change-induced disasters. She emphasised that policies in the country should be viewed through the lens of climate change, and a cross-cutting strategy must be adopted at both provincial and national levels to combat the climate crisis.