A newborn held aloft in Pakistan sums up the sheer injustice of the climate crisis | Fatima Bhutto
My brother organised a medical camp after the summer's deadly floods - a disaster caused by powerful nations
- Fatima Bhutto is an author of fiction and nonfiction
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This summer, intense monsoon rains combined with glacial melt caused super-floods across Pakistan. We are home to the second largest number of glaciers after the polar regions and, thanks to global heating, they are melting at unprecedented, terrifying speed. This is the year the climate emergency came home to me, and this is a photo that haunts me.
The floods wiped out approximately a million livestock, decimated crops, displaced 30 to 50 million Pakistanis, destroyed thousands of kilometres of roads - and months later, the damage is still going on. Stagnant water means farmers cannot plant new crops - those who could not plant rice in October, with water in certain parts remaining thigh high, will have no harvest to reap come March.
Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani author of fiction and nonfiction
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