“Water has surrounded us”: slow death for the Pakistani bond Climate crisis news

Salt scales incurred under the foot while Habib Allah Khadi walks to the grave of his mother to say goodbye before he abandoned his island village in the Pakistani Sindtit Delta.

The storming of sea water in the delta, where the Sind River meets the Arab Sea in the south of the country, causing the collapse of agricultural and fishing societies.

“We have surrounded the salty water from all four sides,” said Khattati from the village of Abdullah Merhabhar in the town of Kharo Chan, about 15 km (9 miles) from where the river is emptied in the sea.

As fish stocks drop, the 54 -year -old turned into sewing, so that this became impossible as well, while four out of 150 families remain.

He said: “In the evening, strange silence dominates the area,” while stray dogs wandered in wooden houses and the abandoned bamboo.

Kharu Chan consisted of about 40 villages, but most of them disappeared under the height of the sea. The city’s population decreased from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023, according to census data.

Khattati is preparing to transfer his family to Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, and she is swollen with economic immigrants, including people from the Sind Delta.

Pakistan Fiderfolk Forum, which defends fishing societies, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the coastal areas of the Delta.

However, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the total Delta Sindh area in the last two decades, according to a study published by the January Institute in March, a research center led by a former climate change minister.

The flow of water raised to the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the fifties, as a result of irrigation channels, hydroelectric dams and the effects of climate change on ice and snow, according to a study conducted by the United States Center for advanced water studies 2018.

This led to the storming of the devastating sea water. The salinity of the water has increased by about 70 percent since 1990, making it impossible to grow crops and influence the shrimp and lobster groups.

“Delta drowns and shrinks.”

From Tibetan, the Sind River flows through the disputed Kashmir before crossing the entire length of Pakistan. The river and its tributaries tell about 80 percent of the country’s agricultural land, which supports millions of livelihoods. The Delta, formed by the rich deposits that the river was deposited while meeting with the sea, was ideal for cultivation, fishing, mangrove and wildlife.

However, more than 16 percent of fertile lands became fruitful due to the infringement of sea water, and found a study of the government water agency in 2019.

In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inside the edge of the water, it covers a white layer of ground salt crystals. Boats carry in drinking water from kilometers away, and the confusion of villagers at home across donkeys.

“Who leaves their country with good mind?” Hagi Karam Gat, whose house was swallowed up at the rising water level, said.

It is rebuilt by the far interior, expected to join more families. “Someone leaves his motherland only when they have no other choice.”

British colonial rulers were the first to change the path of the Indus River with channels and dams, followed recently by dozens of electrical energy projects. Earlier this year, many of the channel’s military projects were stopped on the Sind River when farmers protested in the low river areas in the province of Sind.

To combat the deterioration of the Sind River basin, the government and the United Nations launched the “Live Sind initiative” in 2021. One intervention focuses on restoring the delta by treating soil salinity and protecting agriculture and local ecosystems.

The Sindh government is currently running its mangrove project, with the aim of reviving forests that act as a natural barrier against storming salt water. Although Managrav is restored in some parts of the coast, land seizure projects and their development in residential development pay clearing in other regions.

Neighboring India, at the same time, pose a threat to the river and Delta horizon, after nullifying the 1960 water treaty with Pakistan, which divides the control of the Sind Basin. He has never threatened not to repeat the treaty and build dams towards the source, and pressure the flow of water to Pakistan, which it described as a “act of war”.

Climate activist Fatima Majeed, who works with the Pakistan Fiderfolk Forum, said: Besides their homes, societies have lost a way of life tightly in the Delta.

Majeed said that women, in particular, who have sewed a window and were in hunting a day, in order to find work when they migrate to the cities.

“We did not lose our land; we have lost our culture.”