2022 Floods in Balochistan and the Socio-Economic Context of the Region

Pakistan has been hit hard by floods in recent decades. Heavy floods are becoming increasingly common in Pakistan as a result of glaciers melting and exceptional rainfall during monsoon seasons (Hussain et al. 2020). Because it relies on agricultural production, floods pose the greatest threat to the agricultural sector. More than twenty big floods have occurred in Pakistan since its independence, according to a study by the Federal Flood Commission (Tariq and Van De Giesen 2012). The researcher counted five in Pakistan's first decade, five in the 1970s, four in the 1980s, four in the 1990s, and two in the 2010s. More than 500,000 square kilometers of land were damaged by these floods, 12,000 people were killed, and an annual economic loss of 39 billion dollars was incurred. Of all the economic sectors, the one that has been most hit hard is agriculture, which provides the majority of Pakistanis with their daily sustenance. Pakistan has never had a flood as destructive as the one that occurred in 2010. Information gathered by the NDMA indicates that both public and private infrastructure, including roads, railways, bridges, schools, and crops covering millions of acres, were devastated (Mahmood and Hassan 2022). 728,193 dwellings were damaged, more than 2000 people were killed, and there was an economic loss of almost 578 billion USD.