Risk register · entry
Q2 · The CoconutPakistan monsoon floods
Record monsoon submerged a third of the country built on floodplains.
The rare, high-impact event that was always coming, and was always going to be called unforeseeable afterwards.
Why this quadrant
The starting mechanism is a simple, single-cause, thin-tailed payoff, an annual monsoon overflowing known floodplains, but heat-driven glacial melt, record rainfall multiples, and decades of floodplain construction compounded simultaneously, fattening the tail and turning a linear, budgeted-for hazard into a nonlinear cascade across agriculture, public health, poverty, and international climate finance.
The record
- World Bank: total damages USD 14.9 billion, economic losses USD 15.2 billion, combined over USD 30 billioncertain
- Separate World Bank / Pakistan Climate Change Council estimate: total damage approximately USD 40 billionlikely
- Reconstruction needs: at least USD 16.3 billioncertain
- Deaths: 1,730-1,760 (sources vary between 1,730, 1,739, and 1,760)likely
- 33 million people affectedcertain
- Approximately 8 million people displaced (estimates range 7.9 to 8 million)likely
- Over 2 million homes destroyed or damaged; 2.1 million people left homelesslikely
- More than 4 million acres of agricultural land damaged or destroyedlikely
- Sindh province received about 784% of normal August rainfall; Balochistan about 500%certain
- Sindh absorbed approximately 70% of total damagescertain
- Projected GDP growth reduction: 2.2 percentage points of FY22 GDPcertain
- 8.4 to 9.1 million people projected to be pushed below the poverty linecertain
- Satellite-measured flood extent: approximately 75,000 sq km, roughly 9-10% of Pakistan's territory, versus the widely repeated political claim that one-third of the country was underwatercertain
- World Weather Attribution: climate change made the rainfall up to 50% more intenselikely
- Timeline of flooding: June 15 to October 2022certain
Sources
The newsletter
One risk story a week, taken apart the way this one was: what was known, what was ignored, and which quadrant it really belonged to.
No spam, one email a week.