and killed following gunfire and explosions in baghdad's green zone. it comes after the announcement -- that he was quitting politics. followers have swarmed iraq's government palace. hundreds were injured when security forces tried to drive protesters out of the complex which houses the prime minister's office. hunger strike. protest will continue until

security forces stop using violence against followers. al-sadr called for elections after the last vote failed to create a government. >> this whole escalation comes against the backdrop of 10 months of political rivalries, of dispute that have been derailing forming the government. the dispute namely between one movement and the iranian backed politicians on the other hand. the parliament has failed more than once to form a government or elect a new president due to that political rivalry over who is entitled to form a government. >> pakistan's minister says losses from the floods could be higher than $10 billion.

it will take five years to rebuild and recover. the rains have killed more than 1100 people since june. the government's warning of shortages because of how many crops have been lost. helicopters are being deployed to help those stranded in remote areas. there are conflicting reports out of ukraine that after it launched a counteroffensive against russian forces to retake the curse on region, ukraine's troops -- ukraine says its troops have broken through. russia says the ukrainian advance has been repelled and ukraine suffered heavy losses. you can follow those stories on our website which is updated through the day. i will be back with more news, but next is inside story. stay with us. ♪

rob: pakistan suffers from the worst floods in more than a decade. at least 1000 people have died in two months in torrential monsoon rains. how much is climate change to blame and can the country cope with the resulting humanitarian crisis? this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program . although monsoon rains are an annual occurrence in pakistan, the newest daily has caused the most -- newest deluge has cause

the most destructive floods in memory. the climate change minister has called it a climate induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions. she says more than a third of the country could still be submerged after the monster monsoon season ends. more than 1100 people have died. 15% of the population is effected, half a million homes have been damaged or swept away. bridges and roads are destroyed. we have more from northern pakistan. >> it is a disaster the likes of which pakistan has not seen before. we have been talking to people in the affected area who say this may be four times worse than the 2010 flood which affected over 20 million people across the country. although the flood now poses a grave threat to southern punjab, many key areas are cut off from the outside world.

because the roads and bridges have been swept away by the raging torrents, it's going to be a difficult job to try and get relief and aid to the affected area. pakistan needs help and it needs it fast. although the international community has started sending much needed aid, it will take time to get it to the affected areas. pakistan will need to do more when it comes to coping with such a crisis. and although people may be thinking that the government will come to their aid, so far they are complaining it is only the locals who are helping their fellow citizens. this is indeed a catastrophe of biblical proportions. pakistan will need help fast. rob: provinces in the south are bracing for flooding as water flows down from the mountainous areas than the north. foreign aid has started to arrive. the government says it needs more funds.

>> along with the rising death toll there are a countless number of people who have been injured the knees floods. there are countless people suffering from waterborne illnesses and all kinds of skin diseases. and there are countless displaced by the floodwaters that have been wreaking havoc across pakistan. here, one of the worst affected provinces, humanitarian relief aid is the most needed. the highest number of people have died and continue to suffer from this crisis. while there is help coming, there are international aid packages and airplanes arriving with much-needed data, it is not coming quickly enough. people cannot wait by the side of the road for help, they cannot wait and possibly die before they are helped. they are moving to other larger population centers and looking

for help themselves. they say the least they can do is take up some kind of manual labor, some kind of work so they can earn a little bit of money to feed their children. people truly hungry, truly thirsty, and they say they feel like they are on the brink of death. circumstances here are very serious. at the edge of the indus river, it is clear the river is getting bigger. the water is flowing and the river has -- is swelling. the waters from the north are headed this way. the worry for people here is what will arrive first? the humanitarian relief people need to stay alive, or more floodwaters? rob: let's bring in our guests. dawar butt is an environment policy analyst. sara hayat is a lawyer specializing in climate change policy. peter ophoff is the head of

international federation of red cross and red crescent societies. i know you have worked in several different countries dealing with situations like this in preparation for them, peter. how does this situation compare with what you have seen? peter: thank you for having me on the program. indeed i have been working for the red cross red crescent for a long time. the situation we see here in pakistan is i would say unprecedented. we have been working in many operations. the last year, really devastating and the force that it has, people would clearly not prepared. nobody can be prepared for such a thing. the impact is huge. this is something we will see for a very long time to come as the situation is very dire in pakistan. rob: pakistan has faced severe

floods before. it has had extreme weather on both sides of the scale if you like. this is something significantly different. what is different this time? >> for starters i think one of the things we have seen is the change in the patterns of the monsoon. this happened the last four years. the monsoon has shifted to the south of the country and increased. the water just accumulates. you have massive areas of the country, specifically for the south of the country, 10% of the landmass of the country is underwater. it is significant. what is being said is it is similar to the last 2010 super floods, but in terms of the concentration of issues, it is largest south of the country. rob: even if pakistan and the authorities had enough warning

of what is coming, is there much they could have done to try to ameliorate the situation and at least ease it for some people? dawar butt -- sara: there is a knee-jerk reaction to blame the government buffer pakistan, the floods we are experiencing, even though we had warning floods were coming, and on some level the government was preparing for it, i don't think we could have prepared for what we are seeing right now. especially because the monsoon rains have been unprecedented. we have experienced -- generally pakistan gets four cycles, three to four cycles of monsoon rains. this time we are getting around eight. we are probably going to get more. that said -- there are a bunch of reasons why, but why the floods are so extreme this time, and i don't think the government could really have prepared for this kind of catastrophe and destruction. rob: you say there are a bunch

of reasons. can you run us through what those might be, in addition to the climate change that has been experienced? >> absolutely. think of it like a pyramid. if you found reasons -- the foundational reason is climate change. with climate change, with global warming, your clouds can hold more water weight which means when they leak, there is torrential rain, which is why there is more erratic rainfall and spread across larger regions this time. then of course changing weather patterns because of climate change, which means more monsoon rains, torrential rain. then we have glaciers. pakistan, this region of the world, we have the largest glacial ice mass after the north and south poles. because glaciers are melting and receding, we have seen a lot of flash floods. we have seen a lot of glacier lake outburst floods.

all that water is coming down south into the country. on top of that, so this is like -- the first layer would be climate change. the second would be poor developmental planning. i believe we are to blame for that entirely. we have been constructing on riverbanks and shoulders, basically just obstructing the natural flow of water. nature will win in the end and that is what has happened. the kind of destruction we are experiencing is part and parcel because of poor development planning, because permits to build in areas that are sensitive to flood. there has been a lot of farming on floodplains. that should not have been there to begin with. other reasons for the impact of these kinds of floods, of course, governance challenges, the constant strife between the center that is islamabad and who

is going to be responsible, and a lot of sort of -- it seems like there is a lot of government departments that will keep shifting burden to other government departments and so shirk responsibility. that has done a lot to harm flood relief efforts and for the preparation of floods. that said, the political instability over the last couple months in pakistan exacerbated the situation for us. the nation has been so occupied between -- so occupied and so polarized between political parties and the upcoming general elections that our priorities were amiss. i say this as a huge maybe, but maybe had our priorities been more aligned, we would have prepared better for these floods. >> the monsoon usually is vital for the growth of crops and the income for millions of farmers.

given the scale of what we have been seeing, how much economic impact is this going to have on the farming community in pakistan, which is one of the key elements of the country's economy? >> initial estimates paint a very bleak picture. there are $1 billion of crop losses. nearly $1 billion more when you consider livestock and tractor losses. those are key inputs within the farming communities. then of course the crop that was standing, it is not just that that has been damaged. for the next three to four months, the week crop -- this is the period when the wheat crop is sown, which is then harvested in february and march. there is a cycle for sugarcane crop as well. the cotton crop, which is a big

need because we are a textile manufacturing country, you have textile mills that need that crop and will now have to import that. when you put all that together along with infrastructure losses , roads, bridges, the minimum initial assessment says $5 million. this is just immediate damage. when you think in terms of getting these lands in order, getting the canal system to work, because we have decks being broken, places where small dams have been swept away, it will take a long while. just to give you a sort of estimate from 2010, the estimate

was $40 billion worth of losses. pakistan was already in political crisis and it is in a situation where the economy has been doing poorly. all of that together is becoming a big problem. rob: i want to ask you about the responsibility organizations like yours are having to carry. sarah was making the point that nobody could have been prepared for the scale of what was happening, least of all the government, whether or not they knew what was coming. how much of a burden is falling on organizations like yours compared to the level of response you are seeing from government organizations? peter: i would not call it a burden. a burden is a negative word as well.

what we do is work with governments and communities to make sure people are prepared. that is our role. of course we would rather do other development programs. that would mean everything works perfect. but we are working with communities, with the government, what to do for disaster reduction, what to do in the case of a disaster. everybody learning first-aid, but also, what is the reaction you have to do? how do you get to higher ground? that is the role we are playing. it is nothing to do with people being prepared or not prepared. this was unprecedented. there is nothing you can do about it. it is a combination of rain and the warming of the earth and the melting of the ice and the glaciers.

it is a combination. we assist whatever it is. lots of crops have been lost. areas are still inundated. it might take weeks and months before the water has receded. that means that crops are completely lost. in the appeal we just launched for pakistan, we have a cash component, but actually, it is asking people to start small businesses to buy tools, to buy seeds the moment the water has receded so they can start planting again. we are getting towards the winter now, but we help where we can with what we can do. rob: the climate change minister has been quoted as saying we

need better planning and sustainable development in the ground. we need climate resilient crops as well as structures. that makes sense but this is not a situation pakistan is new too. it has suffered this before. why hasn't this been done? sara: why hasn't flood relief been done or sustainable planning? rob: well, both. the situation is to some extent not new despite the fact this is on an unprecedented scale. one would imagine some effort would have been made to bring in the methods she is talking about, yet she seems to suggest it is taking something like this to put the thought into people's heads. sara: what she was suggesting is that pakistan needs to constantly sort of prepare for and adapt to climate change, something we are doing to the best of our abilities. but at this point i think now that push has come to shove i must say out loud, we are not really responsible for climate change. pakistan is not. we are just on the receiving end

of its impacts. which is why these floods are feeling so personal to us. we contribute less than 0.8% to global greenhouse gas emissions. that is literally negligible. and yet look what is happening. we have lost more than 1000 lives since june, 33 million people are affected. people are sleeping outside in the open. houses, livelihoods, livestock, almost 800,000 livestock have died. like we have been talking about, i will reiterate. i don't think we could have prepared. what we could have done is have better early warning systems. maybe we could have had evacuation plans ready. i think that is poor calculation on the part of provincial disaster management authorities and the national disaster management authority.

however, if you would like to talk about what pakistan is doing, i want to stress we are doing whatever we can with political instability and economic instability. we are the fifth most populated country in the world. sometimes for the government climate changes on the back burner. it should not be. but it does happen. it slides to the back. but we are investing in making climate resilient seeds, so to speak, crops that will grow in saline water -- rob: i want to pick up on something you have talked about and i want to ask dawar about this. sara is making the point that pakistan's contribution to global climate change is percentagewise very very small. why is it do you think that other governments and other countries which produce more of an impact on the climate seem,

if not unwilling, not in a position to be able to help pakistan in situations like this, or in the preparation of situations like this? pakistan is having a minimal impact. they are having a more significant impact. the burden of responsibility should lie with them. dawar: that is 100% correct. it feels very personal. when we talk about terms of impact, just to give you an idea, if you put the population of australia on one side and look just at people affected, we have more people affected right now. when talking about responsibility, pakistan is getting the brunt of all this at 1.2 degrees, the global average. in the 2010 floods, the average was about one degree rise. 0.1 degree increase means for

pakistan, the monsoon pattern can change. it will switch its existing path from centuries ago, but -- so this is what we are really talking about. the emissions of the entire globe have to come down. maybe 1.5 degrees is untenable for pakistan. what happens at that point? if we are going to 1.5 -- this is the goal with the net zero targets. it is an accepted norm, we are going to hit 1.5 or exceed that. that means for millions of people in pakistan, there will be no shelter. they will have to evacuate year after year. when you talk about evacuation plans and everything, we are a country of 33 million people. it is simply not feasible for country like us to pay for such

a big calamity. you talk about pakistan being one of the most vulnerable, art of it is preparedness, some of it is capacity. some of it is resilience. pakistan simply does not have the resources. none of those resources are available to us or have been provided since the paris agreement. rob: i want to bring in sara because she was anxious to make a point. sara: what dawar is saying is absolutely right but the important thing is this part of the world, the global south and the subcontinent, even bangladesh, india, pakistan, we are going to be experiencing very high temperatures if climate change is not controlled or global warming is not controlled. that means more excessive floods. that means we will be seeing floods may be worse than these.

what the government really needs to do, and i would like to tie in with your point, why the government has not prepared for climate change, i think it is absolutely essential that we start preparing now, today, for floods that will be worse than what we are seeing right now. these floods are worse than the 2010 super floods. the next floods could be worse than this. rob: peter is quite anxious to make a point. given the scale of everything we have been talking about, are you concerned organizations like yours will simply reach a point where they cannot cope? peter: it is difficult to say. we have been able to cope over the many years we do exist. every time we adapt to the situation. that is what we have to be as humanitarian organizations, we have to be flexible. yes, you can see, the situation

is getting worse. the 2010 mega floods and the 2022 floods is much worse. what is going to be next and can we deal with it? at the same time you also have to see, 22 floods today at a time when we the people and the communities were already very vulnerable. we went through the whole covid pandemic. we put an economic burden to everybody. to governments, but to the people themselves as well. are we reaching a point we cannot deal with it anymore? i do not think so. all the years i have been working in the humanitarian sector, we have always managed. it is an effort but we do deal with it. and also we are getting better to a certain extent. technology will help us. we can do more with less. the point i want to make as well

come on climate change and pakistan, having the burden of climate change and disasters, the impact of it, i think instead of pointing fingers, yes, we have to deal with that. we will have to go to the west and say look, you have to do more to stop it. what we have to do more with this, 20, compare what happened. how did we cope? how do we cope with 22 floods -- 2022 floods? how can we do better? i do believe my colleagues here in the office that have been very important in the 2010 -- involved in the 2010 floods, we have better systems in place. rob: i'm going to have to ask you to stop, we have run out of time, but i appreciate you very much for being with us. thank you to all of our guests. thank you for watching. you can see the program any time

by visiting al jazeera.com. for further discussion go to our facebook page. you can also join the conversation on twitter. the handle is @ajinsidestory. goodbye for now. wñabñcñcñcñc

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