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“Natural” Disasters? Recentering the Cause of the Pakistan Earthquake and Floods around Humans rather than Mother Nature

INTRODUCTION


“This is not a natural disaster, this is due to blocked drainage,” the Al Jazeera reporter explained as she reported live from the devastating floods currently taking place in Kenya (Al Jazeera English). In the last month, we have witnessed colossal flooding in Oman, Dubai, Medina, Mathare and Rio Grande do Sul. What do all these places have in common? All of them are in the Global South. Almost two decades ago, as I sat in the comfort of my family’s suburban home in Chicago, I witnessed a catastrophic earthquake take place in the land where my great grandfather once governed, Kashmir, Pakistan. Then, in 2022, as I prepared for the first year of my master’s program, one-third of Pakistan’s population was enduring excessive flooding. Again, I found myself watching the loss of life, livestock, and communities in my family’s motherland. Outraged by the devastation, the situation prompted me to write “Natural Disaster,” an essay where I share my personal reflections witnessing the vulnerability of people, who look just like me, endure calamity. As a companion piece to my original essay, this paper will complicate the idea that “natural” disasters are fully natural and are, in fact, due to human negligence.


At the time of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, the internet was not as readily accessible, so we relied on CNN’s live TV coverage. Upon analyzing the articles released at that time, I came across news titles such as “Powerful quake jolts South Asia” (Sengupta, NYT) and “Earthquake hits South Asia” (Guardian) with words like “deadly earthquakes” (BBC) placing most, if not all, the agency on nature. As a teenager, I watched the b-roll panning across homes that once were and footage of buildings reduced to rubble while men pulled out survivors with their bare hands. Sadly, this was an image I was all too familiar with when the media covered the Global South–one of hardship, strife, and destruction. As if to say, that was the only kind of fate that was destined for the inhabitants of this region. There was never any mention of previous warning signs, ways to increase readiness, and, most importantly, no implication of what role the Global North had in any of the misfortunes that were unraveling. In recent years, the discussion has shifted, bringing attention to greenhouse gas emissions, the deathly cost of a high carbon footprint and the environmental implications of heavily industrialized countries. Even so, the news we consume does not divulge the responsibility of these “natural” disasters because it is far more convenient to rely on an image of a vengeful mother nature.

Environmental architect and activist, Jonee Brigham, offers a paradigm shift in how we understand our relationship to the earth in her discussion of a “caring partnership model” through the Apprenticene. What Jonee recommends is that the relationship ought to move into an apprenticeship, where we learn and observe what is taking place on our earth. In order to reinforce this point, she presents the criteria for a “caring ecology” which is to “create a more complete human-environment paradigm that includes humans (with their culture and economy) as integral parts within and dependent upon the larger Earth system and in caring relationship with it” (Brigham 4). The Apprenticene offers an alternative perspective to the current one, where human beings are tasked with understanding our behavior in relation to the earth when examining “natural” disasters. In other words, if we pay close attention, we can learn from mother nature and work more collaboratively instead of playing the blame game. 

Another similarity shared between the regions that are experiencing devastating floods and earthquakes is that they all belong to countries that were formerly colonized. To better understand the role of modern-day colonization, we have to investigate colonial-racial legacies of the plantation, white supremacy, and capitalist development (Davis et al. 1). Basically, we must challenge who defines what it means to be human today. If a select few people in power are determining how humans live and what resources we are dependent on then an Anthropocene does not adequately reflect our society, instead we exist within a Capitalocene where “the destructive and accelerating logics of resource depletion and petrochemical dependency within capitalism” represents our world system (Davis et al. 2). To that end, when we actualize the combined knowledge of the Apprenticene and Capitalocene, we reject predetermined ways of moving through our earth by learning and embodying ecological justice.

As we deepen our understanding of human agency in “natural” disasters, we begin to notice that the related research on climate change and health is often incomplete “giving little attention to structural discrimination and the need for racial justice” (Deivanayagam et al. 1). Ultimately, the way we think about “natural” disasters is also related to power. The “clique of White British men,” as Davis et al. refers to, intentionally want us to believe that human beings have no control over the floods and earthquakes that ravage our motherlands to maintain, and even intensify, industrialized human behavior. Overwhelmingly, we have enough information to know that “natural” disasters are not entirely natural and that the rhetoric of the media generates an attitude where the public takes less responsibility perpetuating a notion that nature is just running its course.


MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE OF 2005 PAKISTAN EARTHQUAKE

In the first paragraph of Somini Sengupta’s New York Times article “Powerful quake jolts South Asia,” she uses the following words to describe the earthquake: “powerful,” “flattening” and “killing.” Sengupta goes on to quote the Pakistani Interior Minister at that time, Ahmed Sherpao, who is reported to have said that the earthquake “wiped out” entire villages. In under five minutes, over 70,000 people lost their lives. While the area that was most affected was in the northern region, the article goes on to describe the destruction that also swept across the capital city of Islamabad where old buildings and an upscale five-tower apartment complex took “the biggest hit” (Sengupta 2). Considering that old buildings and upscale buildings were equally vulnerable, the question that remains unanswered while reading the article is: why weren’t newer buildings designed to withstand an earthquake of this magnitude? As stated in the article, India was also affected by the earthquake, however, the death toll was remarkably greater in Pakistan. This further complicates the arbitrary man-made borderline drawn across India during the Partition of 1947–a line drawn by a British man who had no prior first-hand experience of the region. So, when revisiting the language used by Sengupta the question remains who actually did the “flattening” and “killing”? Is it appropriate to place all the blame on mother nature? 

While reviewing the initial coverage of the earthquake from the BBC, the language is similar to the New York Times article written by Sengupta. Both articles were published on the day the earthquake took place, October 8, 2005. The first line of the article states that the quake “wiped out several villages” (“Hundreds die in South Asia quake”). When analyzing these articles' immediate coverage of the earthquake, some critical questions to examine are: who is writing the story? who benefits from the story? and who is missing from the story? While the BBC article does not list a journalist, the New York Times does. Somini Sengupta is an Indian journalist who has spent most of her life in North America. While reading the article, I wonder why local journalists who are more connected to the land affected by the earthquake are not writing this story. In both articles, no locals were interviewed. Instead, politicians and official representatives are quoted the most. Articles like these positively reinforce the “clique of White British men” (Davis et al. 2), or those of similar political persuasion, who are the ones benefiting most from a story like this because they do not need to take any accountability.

The first line of The Guardian’s article from October 8, 2005, states that the earthquake “reduced villages to rubble, triggered landslides and flattened an apartment building” (“Earthquake hits south Asia”). Again, much of the article’s focus is on the response of official representatives, like the senior provincial Cabinet minister, police chief, prime minister, and president. In this article, the foreign secretary’s comments and concerns are also cited. The final line of this article refers to the other regions which were “jolted” by the quake. What’s unique about The Guardian’s initial coverage is how many non-Pakistanis are cited for their expertise and first-hand experience of the quake. A critical element which is missing from this article is how the people, on the ground, felt the earthquake. I am left wondering what their immediate thoughts were and whether they had hoped for a better system with a sophisticated evacuation plan or, like what we witnessed that same year, was the earthquake another example of how the levees broke in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina? Could it have been avoided? Was it possible to save more lives? In the framework of the Apprenticene, was there a lesson that was missed before the earthquake which would have led to less devastation, less lives lost and less overall damages?


ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GLOBAL NORTH AND SOUTH

            When considering the status of the current relationship between the Global North and the Global South, the first term that comes to mind is unequal. In general terms, the Global South refers to countries which are less economically developed whereas the Global North represents countries that have more industrialized and advanced economies. For the purpose of this paper, the relationship between these two regions will be examined through an environmental lens.      First, let us consider carbon dioxide emissions as they are the main driver of global climate change (Ritchie). Based on data made available by Our World in Data, “in the 20th century, global emissions were dominated by Europe and the United States; by 1950, they accounted for more than 85% of emissions each year.” At the time of the 2005 Pakistan Earthquake, the U.S. was responsible for more carbon dioxide emissions than Asia (excluding China) based on the Annual CO2 Emissions by World Region chart (pictured below). While CO2 emissions are not directly correlated to all “natural” disasters, there still remains a connection. In other words, it is critical to understand the global context related to CO2 emissions because it colors the unequal environmental relationship as it relates to earthquakes and floods.            

In their paper “Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960-2018,” Jason Hickel and his co-authors reinforce the unequal relationship between the two regions by taking history into account: “the wealth of high-income nations depends on the process of appropriation from the rest of the world” (Hickel et. al 1). Even with the end of colonialism, the colonial behavior lives on as wealthy countries extract from the Global South so they can continue to maintain their own supply and demand. With that in mind, the second item to consider when evaluating the existing environmental relationship is the way in which industry and production is outsourced to less developed countries to sustain the developed economies of the Global North. “Recent empirical data confirms that high-income nations continue to rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world” (Hickel et al. 2). Each one of us living in the U.S. can relate to this by simply looking at the label on our clothes, more often than not, that piece of clothing was made in a Global South country.

This extractive behavior also translates into practices like oil digging, mountain drilling, coal mining–all activities that manipulate tectonic plates and can awaken dormant fault lines (Douglas). When tectonic plates move, a region is more susceptible to earthquakes and Pakistan is no stranger to these practices. The research which connects oil drilling and mining to the 2005 Pakistan earthquake is limited and this goes back to the question: who tells the story and who benefits from the story? What we do know is that the 2005 earthquake was triggered along the Balakot-Bagh fault line (Mahmood et al.). Ultimately, building dams, expanding highways by drilling into mountains, and mineral resource mining all disrupt the natural ecosystem making a country like Pakistan more vulnerable to disasters like the one that took place in October 2005.

Upon revisiting Our World in Data site, Ritchie and Roser also include a heat map which is titled: Per Capita CO2 Emissions and while Pakistan is responsible for 0.8 tonnes/person, the number of emissions produced by the U.S. is disproportionately higher at 14.9 tonnes/person. So, while Pakistan is not the culprit behind an overproduction of CO2 emissions, they are certainly the victim of this overproduction and that comes into play when investigating the unnatural weather patterns during the summer of 2022. Biologist and climate change researcher, Arthur Wyns, explains “climate change played a key role in exacerbating the extreme rainfall that led to the flooding,” in his article “Disaster diplomacy in the wake of the 2022 Pakistan floods.” Wyns’ postulation leads us to a third characteristic which reflects the current environmental relationship: increased precipitation. Of course, increased precipitation also represents rising sea levels, snowmelt and extreme heat which all contribute to erratic flooding.

In order to better understand the floods that took place in Pakistan in 2022, an analysis of climate patterns across the northern hemisphere must also be taken into account. The floods happened during a summer where record high temperatures, drought and wildfires affected most of China, Europe, and the USA. As Wyns and Deivanayagam et al. emphasize in their research, climate disasters are not experienced equally, groups who are already disadvantaged suffer most intensely. In this case, the vulnerable communities of Sindh and Baluchistan were severely impacted by the floods, displacing 8 million people, and increasing dysentery, malaria and dengue exposure all as a result of still water (Zaidi et al.) The full breadth of damages endured from the 2022 floods is still unknown. As Wyns contends, “Pakistan’s climate vulnerability is compounded by the fact that it bears a disproportionate share of the costs of carbon— human, social, and economic costs—despite having contributed little to global cumulative emissions'' (Wyns). Again, the pattern is increasingly evident of one population paying a disproportionately high price for the actions of others.

With all the loss and damage incurred in Pakistan during the 2022 floods, the question regarding prevention stands: if there were enough warning signs, why weren’t better mitigation measures observed and, more emphatically, why aren’t countries responsible for CO2 emissions taking accountability for their actions? While one avenue requires more listening, observing and learning to take action in time to support vulnerable communities ahead of disaster, another avenue sheds light on the culture of aid. Wyns lays out various proposals presented by the United Nations and other supporting agencies to financially support Pakistan on their pathway to recovery. But such a solution still perpetuates dependency on Global North countries and does not present an alternative for a country like Pakistan to sustain and protect itself against future “natural” disasters. “Loss and damage is really not something you can deny anymore,” says Farhana Yamin, a veteran climate negotiator, lead figure of the Extinction Rebellion movement, and originally from Pakistan. “This isn’t any longer about trying to prevent something in 100 or 50 years’ time. 20 years ago, we were still saying, ‘Let’s do more mitigation and adaptation.’ Right now, we have to do all three” (Wyns). The truth is that doing all three is an impossible mission and does not set up a country like Pakistan for sustained success.

To further contextualize the environmental relationship between Global North countries and Global South countries, it is beneficial to consider William Easterly’s “planners” approach to aid where an outsider knows the solution and sees issues, i.e. the floods in Pakistan, as a technical engineering problem that can be solved with restrictive aid packages (Easterly 4). This framework pays no attention to the perpetrators of the problem in question, nor does it empower local communities to carry out their own solutions. In his paper, “Pakistan floods: breaking the logjam of spiraling health shocks,” Mr. Zahid Memon, a climate response specialist at Aga Khan Foundation, outlines what solutions ought to look like. “Foresighted planning can reduce resource demands, mitigate disease, under-nutrition and deaths but will require a modicum of upfront resourcing and a shift of political narrative from acute emergency handling to governance of health risks mitigation” (Zaidi et al. 2). During my conversation with Mr. Memon, he further explained, “the floods are more man-made by diversion patterns, “if this happens again, we will not be prepared.” Relating Mr. Memon’s comments back to Easterly’s “planners” framework, the response from the global community is reactive and uncoordinated and this has certainly been true for the Pakistan floods of 2022.

When considering the reaction to the earthquake of 2005 and the floods of 2022 in Pakistan, perhaps it is too simplistic to place all the blame on a post-colonial colonial mindset which lives on through the actions of Global North nations. These actions reflect a poor environmental relationship, overproduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and reactive aid packages when “natural” disasters happen which only band aid problems rather than address them at their roots. In Pakistan, unfortunately, the governing bodies, or the ruling elite, prioritize provinces based on their own personal connections. More explicitly, at the time of the 2022 floods, the ruling class was not from Sindh nor Baluchistan so their interest in the well-being of this region was nominal. It is not too simplistic however, to say that the ruling elite who have been put into positions of power still perpetuate the colonial mindset because Global North nations are responsible for dispersing monetary funds and making agreements with countries like Pakistan. For representatives of the Global North, it is in their best interest to ensure the person in leadership in a Global South country, like Pakistan, is someone who can be easily swayed to advance their vested interests.


THE ANTHROPOCENE, APPRENTICENE, AND CAPITALOCENE: ECOLOGIC JUSTICE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

            Now, nearly twenty years after the South Asia earthquake, we have access to far more information than we had then, information that can help us mitigate or prevent new disasters. As such, the term “anthropocene” was introduced by chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002 to center human beings around activity of geologic proportions. This term was meant to invite humans to consider just how much agency we have in our atmosphere. “It suggests a realization that humans have Earth-changing power; the anthropocene is helpful in describing our disruption, but perhaps not helpful in describing a desired destiny.” (Brigham 15). By combining human agency with the information available to us, we graduate to the Apprenticene because now we are compelled to do something about the fact that we know better. As the Maya Angelou adage goes, “when you know better, do better.”

Before graduating to the Apprenticene, however, it is important to understand the nuance that exists within the Anthropocene. If this term is centered around the activity of human beings, it is fundamental to take a closer look at which human beings, exactly, we are referring to. The terms are not meant to debilitate us but rather educate us so we can grasp the full context. As Davis et al. clarify, the Anthropocene is clearly not the product of “human nature,” or humanity as a whole, but rather interrelated historical processes set in motion by a small minority. “This privileged cadre provided the preconditions for the development of global capitalism through processes of settler colonialism and enslavement, organized and rationalized by racism” (Davis et al. 4). The “privileged cadre” referenced is another way of saying “clique of White British men,” which is to center human activity on the decision-makers rather than the people who must adhere to these decisions, in spite of their better judgment. In the context of the “natural” disasters which have taken place in Pakistan, the onus is on those who made structural decisions making human toll inevitable at a devastatingly high rate during the earthquake and floods.

Donna Harraway bluntly explains, “it's more than climate change; it's also extraordinary burdens of toxic chemistry, mining, depletion of lakes and rivers under and above ground, ecosystem simplification, vast genocides of people and other critters, etc, etc, in systemically linked patterns that threaten major system collapse after major system collapse after major system collapse” (Harraway 159). When we continue to maintain structures which are not meant to protect us, then history will continue to repeat itself over and over again. After an earthquake or flood has taken place, there is recorded damage but, there is also the damage which is unrecorded and unknown while the burden of this damage will be experienced nevertheless. In many ways, and as most scholars on this topic would agree, the Capitalocene is a branch of the Anthropocene as it relates back to the pivotal role capitalism plays through environmental degradation and all the conditions Haraway lays out. In other words, capitalism is the main culprit behind the ecological crisis we now find ourselves in. But this toxic pattern has to come to an end and one way of doing that is when we transition into an Apprenticene.

The Apprenticene paradigm is meant for humans to understand our roles in the ecosystem differently, in a way that catalyzes a caring relationship. This caring relationship includes healing and learning from the past. A few critical ingredients in the Apprenticene model are exercising humility, putting an end to fighting with nature or trying to prove who is more powerful, and using the advancements of fuel-based economies within the constraints of the planet earth’s natural systems (Brigham 17). Within the context of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, the Apprenticene in action looks like the investigation completed by Sudmeier-Rieux et al. where they propose “integrated risk assessments for understanding the geological, environmental, and social contexts in which landslides occur” (Sudmeier-Rieux et al. 113). While this type of investigation is time-consuming and costly, it is essential for prevention measures and reconstruction efforts to be successful and sustainable. During the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, children and families were under the rubble of their own homes and schools in under five minutes and, as Mr. Memon strongly suggested during our interview, buildings in regions like these “should be built on an elevated (more earthquake resilient) platform.” In other words, the caring relationship model here combines the investigation conducted by Sudmeier-Rieux’s team and recommendations from local climate response specialists.

In the aftermath of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, it behooves us to consider how humility can lead to constructive, rather than destructive, growth. To begin, major floods typically take place during the intense monsoon season and are sometimes affected by tropical cyclones. In Chen et al.’s paper, “Pakistan’s 2022 floods: Spatial distribution, causes and future trends from Sentinel-1 SAR observations,” they use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for flood detection research. Their study is an appropriate example of using technological advancement for a geologic understanding of the land. “The intensification of human activities such as forest and vegetation destruction, lake reclamation, ground subsidence caused by groundwater extraction, also has significant impacts on the fragile mountain systems and plain” (Chen et al. 2).

Through the Chen et al.’s study, they determined that unusually high temperatures trigger glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) which then led to flash floods in vulnerable areas. Furthermore, the major flood event took place after twelve consecutive weeks of precipitation. Taking all of this into account, the evidence demonstrates that better preparedness was achievable. The study corroborates Mr. Memon’s comments that the floods could have been mitigated by better diversion patterns. Humility, in this context, relates back to our relationship with the earth and how a better partnership could have salvaged lives. Furthermore, supportive studies demonstrate that there is a positive correlation between education and action, providing evidence that education, both formal and informal, plays a critical role in the behavior of people when faced with a catastrophic event (Bahram et al.).

Destruction of structures and hillslopes in Muzaffarabad, near the earthquake epicenter.

Homes submerged in water in the aftermath of the 2022 floods in Pakistan.

In order for ecological justice to be realized across the Global South, the Apprenticene paradigm needs to influence the mindset and actions of human beings across both the Global South and the Global North. We have enough evidence to deduce that the dominating thought process among decision-makers is that they accept their superior position and take charge of Earth systems. What we really need for our survival is an acceptance of our failure(s) and to learn to work in partnership within our global system (Brigham 20). When we are open to learning, countries like Pakistan can replicate the disaster readiness model of their neighboring Asian country, Japan. In 1995, Japan also endured an earthquake in Kobe and, after that, they implemented systems to decrease the scale of human toll and structural damages. With their advancements, by most metrics, Japan is no longer considered to be a Global South country. What is getting in the way for a country like Pakistan?                


CONCLUSION

Pakistan is just over seventy-five years old, making it a young country. Like most countries when gaining independence from colonial powers, the leaders have a vision and dreams for the future which are largely founded on prosperity–Pakistan was no different. However, the dreams are deferred when those leaders are confronted with one calamity after another. “In the past two decades alone, the country has endured more than 12 major floods, which have left a profound mark on the lives and health of its people,” (Abdullah et al. 1). Historically, when the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia experienced disasters like floods, it helped their society become more resilient. But now, we are faced with an entirely new challenge, because floods and earthquakes are not an unusual occurrence when we live in a world where four floods, and possibly more, are taking place within the same month that I am writing this paper.

In conclusion, I cannot consider the history of “natural” disasters that have occurred in Pakistan without acknowledging that, over the last seven months, the world has been witnessing a completely man-made disaster unfold in Palestine. With the most sophisticated weapons like bunker busters, precise missiles, white phosphorus, and a wide variety of other ammunition, at least 40,000 people have been killed and this has nothing to do with mother nature. Instead, this has everything to do with land, control, and geopolitics. Again, the most vulnerable not only have to pay a price, but they are also martyred in a fight they never signed up for. Over time, through media, reports, stories, we have arrived at a point where certain groups of people have been inadvertently deemed dispensable or, worse yet, “collateral damage.”[1] Through the work of this paper and other supportive research, my hope is that we do not accept the language of natural disasters as status quo because it simply is not true and does not reflect the full picture. As a so-called enlightened civilization, we should be doing everything we can so that a young girl, twenty years from now, is not watching the destruction of her family’s motherland while she sits in the comfort of her home in the Global North.


WORKS CITED

                          

 

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