In May this year, several villages were flooded by the break-up of a glacier near Hasanabad in northern Pakistan. In addition, two hydroelectric power plants and a bridge were destroyed. At the same time Siddiq Baig and his family were struggling there without water. The torrential rains that lasted for several days had claimed the lives of more than 75 people and destroyed water pipelines.
Saddiq Baig is a disaster expert at the High Mountain Research Center at the University of Islamabad. “There was no drinking water in our homes, so I had to move to a hotel with my family,” he says. About five million people living in high mountain areas are being hit twice by climate change. One is the floods. Because of this, there is only water all around, and on the other hand there is a crisis of drinking water.
In May itself, Pakistan's climate change ministry warned that 33 glaciers were on the verge of collapse due to unnaturally hot weather. Baig says that 70 percent of the drinking water supply to the people of this area comes from these glaciers. If the glaciers end, this drinking water will not be replenished by rain water. In April, Pakistan experienced a record breaking heat and the temperature went up to 49 degrees Celsius. Due to this temperature, the snow started melting on the mountains and the water came and got deposited in the natural dams. The dams started collapsing due to excessive water filling of the dams. Beg says that the glaciers that were growing till a few years ago are no longer stable. According to him, "This entire region or rather, this high mountainous part of Asia is suffering from climate change. This is the truth."