CNN
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Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has warned that local weather change won’t spare different nations the kind of catastrophe that left as much as one third of his nation underwater and tens of millions of its youngsters prone to water-borne ailments.
He advised the United Nations General Assembly on Friday to return collectively and “act now” earlier than it’s too late.
“One thing is very clear, what happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” Sharif advised world leaders.
“For 40 days and 40 nights, a biblical flood poured down, smashing centuries of weather records, challenging everything we knew about disaster and how to manage it,” Sharif mentioned.
He went on to provide first-hand element of the size and magnitude of the disaster dealing with his nation, the place floods attributable to report monsoon rains and melting glaciers have killed greater than 1,600 individuals since June.
Sharif mentioned swaths of the nation are “still underwater, submerged in an ocean of human suffering.”
“In this ground zero of climate change, 33 million people, including women and children, are now at high risk from health hazards,” he mentioned.
Authorities have warned it might take as much as six months for the flood waters to recede within the nation’s hardest-hit areas, as fears rise over the menace posed by waterborne ailments together with cholera and dengue.
The deluge has left 3.4 million youngsters in want of “immediate, lifesaving support,” in keeping with UNICEF, leaving them susceptible to contracting water-borne ailments, together with dengue fever and malaria.
“The undeniable and inconvenient truth is that this calamity has not been triggered by anything we have done,” he mentioned.
Pakistan is accountable for lower than 1% of the world’s planet-warming gases, European Union knowledge reveals, but it’s the eighth most susceptible nation to the local weather disaster, in keeping with the Global Climate Risk Index.
It’s paying a hefty value, not solely with lives however destroyed colleges, houses and bridges.
Sharif mentioned life in Pakistan has modified eternally and feared that the nation will likely be “left alone high and dry to cope with the crisis which we did not create.”
He defined that it was “entirely reasonable” to anticipate some approximation of justice for this loss and harm, warning that “clearly the time for talk about action has passed.”
The nation’s National Disaster Management Authority says that among the many 1,606 deaths recorded up to now, 579 are youngsters.
Sharif advised the UN along with the lives misplaced, 1,000,000 houses have been destroyed and one other million broken. He additionally mentioned that greater than 1,000,000 cattle have been killed and 4 million acres of crops have washed away.
He mentioned he’s “fully committed” to rebuilding Pakistan however warned different nations to deal with the long run which incorporates combating local weather change.
“It is high time we took a pause from the preoccupations of the 20th century to return to the challenges of the 21st century,” Sharif mentioned.
“The entire definition of national security has changed today. And unless the leaders of the world come together to act and act now on an agreed common agenda, there will be no earth to fight wars over. Nature will be fighting back. And for that, humanity is no match at all.”