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KARACHI: While Pakistan’s southern Sindh province remains busy with safety precautions as it braces for floods heading downstream from Punjab, farmers in the province’s coastal district await the arrival of river water, saying it would prevent the sea from swallowing their lands and provide better catch for fishers. 

Devastating floods in Punjab have killed 43 and displaced more than 1.8 million people, authorities have said. Excess releases from Indian dams and heavy monsoon showers have destroyed crops in Punjab, caused rivers to swell and affected more than 3.6 million people.

Sharjeel Inam Memon, information minister of the Sindh government, said floodwaters are expected to enter the province at Guddu Barrage between September 5 and 6, adding that the administration was “fully prepared” to deal with the situation.

“All the arrangements have been made, the government has established relief camps and is evacuating the population along with animals and livestock,” he told Arab News, adding that he could not rule out the possibility of “super floods.”

The term is used by officials in Pakistan to describe exceptionally high flood levels that exceed normal seasonal flows, often overwhelming barrages and embankments.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) warns that floods heading downstream may cause similar devastation in Sindh, Gulab Shah, a 52-year-old farmer from Jhaloo village near the coastal town of Keti Bunder in Thatta district, waits for the river water to arrive. 

Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in Sindh, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities.

“Our ancestors have lived here for centuries,” Shah told Arab News. “There was a time when we owned thousands of acres of land, but due to the drying up of the delta, the sea has swallowed it all.”

Shah said his family of 100 people, comprising 12 brothers and two sisters, now makes do with only 350 acres. 

“Even on this land, rice no longer grows as it used to, and the banana crop has completely vanished,” he rued. 

Shah says flood upstream sometimes translates into survival for areas downstream. 

“We feel sorrow for those affected by floods in other regions, but whenever floods come, they bring water into the Indus River,” he said.

DYING RIVERS, INFERTILE PLAINS

Dr. Hassan Abbas, a hydrologist who earned his doctorate in water resources at Michigan State University, agrees the Indus Delta has shrunk and “almost died because the water did not reach there.”

“It’s just as important for the rivers to reach the sea as it is for the water to flow from your body,” Dr. Abbas explained. 

The hydrologist said Pakistan’s rivers have gotten smaller due to dams, saying that they have almost become almost dry. He said due to this, ecological services and environmental systems are “dying and under extreme stress.”

Dr. Abbas added that when floods halt upstream, salts that once washed into the sea remain on farmland, damaging the soil. 

“An estimated 60 million tons of salt, every year, used to be washed by the river into the sea,” he said. “Now, not even 10 million tons make it there.”

He noted that while floods cause destruction, they also make Pakistan’s plains fertile. 

“You have to adapt to the floods,” he said. “This system of floods, if it doesn’t exist, then your food basket will collapse.”

’MAJOR THREAT FROM THE SEA’

Along the coast, residents describe how the sea has encroached over the years as freshwater declines. Younus Khaskheli, chairman of the Sindh-based fisherfolk association MaHajjiri Samaji Sangat, recalled how dams built on rivers since 1960 have led to a decline in the mud and silt that flowed downstream. 

“So many islands have been cut off [now] that the sea is four to six kilometers ahead,” Khaskheli said. “From 1960 till now, about 1.2 million people migrated from there and came here.”

Khaskheli said 80 percent of the people who migrated were from the fishing communities. Mangrove forests, once spread over a million hectares in the province, had now shrunk to around 70,000 hectares due to the drying riverbed. 

“The people who say that the water of the river Sindh is wasted in the sea are not aware of the ecosystem,” he explained. “This is a natural process. The river brings silage and soil with it. The ecosystem circulates in this way.”

Memon shared Khaskheli’s concerns about the Indus Delta.

“The Indus Delta needs water every year,” he said, adding that it does not receive sufficient flows due to the decreased level of water in the Indus.

“This time there are chances, yes, that we will fulfill the requirement of the delta,” Memon added.

For others like Manzoor Ali Rind, who resides in Sindh’s Dadu district hundreds of kilometers away from the sea, previous floods wreaked havoc. Rind cultivates around 10 acres of farmland in Bux Ali Rind village in Dadu.

“When I hear the word flood, it takes me 15 years back when it wiped out my rice crops,” Rind told Arab News, recalling the devastation of the 2010 floods. 

“It took me years to stand on my feet again.”

But for farmers like Shah, who reside in coastal areas, the approaching sea serves as a stark reminder. He said his village used to be 25 kilometers away from the sea.

Now, it is only three kilometers away.

“We don’t know when the sea will swallow the little land we have left,” Shah said. “We want to be protected from the sea, and for that, it is essential that water flows in the river.”

After monsoon rains lashed Sindh in June, Shah saw something he hadn’t in a decade: the hilsa fish. 

“Now, whenever water comes, whether from rains or floods, we feel happy,” Shah said. “Because it brings prosperity for us and also protects us from a major threat from the sea.”