Catastrophic floods in Pakistan put climate justice in the spotlight
A third of the country was submerged in a disaster that intensified calls for the rich world to help those it harmed.
Catastrophic flooding submerged roughly a third of Pakistan this year, in a disaster of staggering scale that killed more than 1,700 people, displaced millions and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, intensifying global calls for wealthy, high-emitting nations to help the vulnerable countries bearing the brunt of climate change.
The flooding followed an extraordinary monsoon season, supercharged by extreme heat earlier in the year that had melted glaciers and primed the atmosphere to hold more moisture. Vast areas of the country were inundated, with entire villages, roads, bridges and crops washed away, and millions left homeless and exposed to disease.
The disaster laid bare a profound injustice at the heart of the climate crisis. Pakistan is responsible for only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming, yet it found itself among the countries most devastated by the consequences, with limited resources to recover.
The country's leaders and advocates used the catastrophe to press the case for climate justice on the international stage, arguing that the nations most responsible for the crisis had a moral obligation to help those least responsible yet most harmed, both to cope with disasters and to rebuild.
The floods became a rallying point in the push for a "loss and damage" fund, agreed at the UN climate summit later that year. They stood as a harrowing example of the escalating human cost of a warming world, and of the deep inequities in who suffers most from a crisis driven overwhelmingly by the wealthy.