Dipping a roller into a tray of blue paint, Mohamed Rashid counts his losses after record monsoon rains forced him to hang up his overalls for weeks on end, adding to his money worries as an economic crisis grips Pakistan.
Millions of low-income small business owners and self-employed workers like Rashid are struggling to repair damage and recover lost earnings due to the heavy rains and devastating floods that have killed more than 1,000 people since June.
In Rashid’s home city of Karachi, the country’s largest, weeks of rain left the streets knee deep in water and sludge and meant he could only work five days in July — Pakistan’s wettest for three decades.
“I earned not more than Rs10,000 ($46),” Rashid, 43, said, comparing that to his usual monthly earnings of up to Rs100,000.
Facing a balance of payments crunch, Pakistan is finding it difficult to fund reconstruction efforts after the floods due to spending curbs as it awaits bailout money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The government has announced cash support to families, but almost nothing has been offered to small businesses for damaged property and goods, and many traders say they feel abandoned.
“(The government) is killing us slowly,” said Mohamed Hamid, 27, at his shop where he sells and repairs printers.
He said he suffered losses due to getting stuck daily for hours on Karachi’s flooded roads. But his biggest problem is soaring prices that are hiking the cost of doing business — and undoing his gradual recovery from the impact of Covid-19.
Annual consumer price inflation reached nearly 25% in July, the highest in 14 years.
“The powder used in the ink cartridges of printers has become expensive, but customers refuse to pay me if I increase my charges proportionately,” said Hamid, who has been dipping into his savings to provide for his family-of-seven.


Monsoon destruction
While the monsoon brings a wave of destruction almost every year, successive governments have failed to adequately warn and prepare for its impact, say climate experts, warning that climate change is fuelling extreme weather.
“What you see today is just a trailer of what’s in store for us with poverty, hunger, malnutrition and disease if we don’t pay heed to climate change,” said climate change and development expert Ali Tauqeer Sheikh.
The Global Climate Risk Index 2021, an annual ranking from research group Germanwatch, ranks Pakistan eighth among countries most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.
From tailors and cobblers to repairmen, traders worry that without any concrete policies to cut climate change-related risks — especially at a time when financial pressures keep piling — their businesses could go under.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif formed a task force to mitigate the effects of climate change during an intense heatwave in May, and last week chaired a cabinet meeting to discuss the quick implementation of climate adaptation policies.
“Gone are the days when climate change was the subject of drawing room discussions. It is affecting our everyday life. Food and water security is directly linked to climate hazards,” he posted on Twitter after the meeting.
But for Talat Shaheen, a mother-of-six who intermittently lives and works at small home-based garment factories, the government needs to do more.
“Rains may be one factor, but factories are not getting work as the purchasing power of people has diminished since the pandemic,” said Shaheen, whose husband has been unemployed for two years.
On a good day she earns up to Rs1,000, but such days are “getting scarcer”.
“No work means sharing a 50 rupee-plate of cooked lentils and rice between the eight of us,” she said, adding that they were forced to starve with prices of basic items such as cooking oil and flour having nearly trebled.
“What can the poor eat?” — Thomson Reuters Foundation




South Asia’s monsoon explained
Floods in Pakistan have killed more than 1,000 people after what its climate change minister called a record unbroken cycle of monsoon rains with “8 weeks of non-stop torrents”.

AFP explains what the monsoon is, why it is so important and yet so dangerous, and how climate change and other man-made effects may be altering the vast life-giving but destructive annual weather system.


What is the South Asian monsoon?
The Southwest or the Asian Summer Monsoon is essentially a colossal sea breeze that brings South Asia 70-80 percent of its annual rainfall between June and September every year.
It occurs when summer heat warms the landmass of the subcontinent, causing the air to rise and sucking in cooler Indian Ocean winds which then produce enormous volumes of rain.


Why it is important?
The monsoon is vital for agriculture and therefore for the livelihoods of millions of farmers and for food security in the poor region of around two billion people.
But it brings destruction every year in landslides and floods. Melting glaciers add to the volume of water while unregulated construction in flood-prone areas exacerbates the damage.


Is it the same every year?
Despite being heavily studied, the monsoon is relatively poorly understood. Exactly where and when the rain will fall is hard to forecast and varies considerably.
This year, for example, while Pakistan has seen a deluge, eastern and northeastern India reportedly had the lowest amounts of July rainfall in 122 years.


What explains the variability?
Fluctuations are caused by changes in global atmospheric and oceanic conditions, such as the El Nino effect in the Pacific and a phenomenon called the Equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation (EQUINOO) only discovered in 2002.
Other factors are thought to include local effects such as aerosols, clouds of dust blowing in from the Sahara desert, air pollution and even irrigation by farmers.


What about climate change?
India is getting hotter and in recent years has seen more cyclones but scientists are unclear on how exactly a warming planet is affecting the highly complex monsoon. A study last year by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) tracking monsoon shifts from the mid-20th century suggested that it was becoming stronger and more erratic.
Initially, aerosol pollution reflecting sunlight subdued rainfall, but from the 1980s the warming effects of greenhouse gases began to drive stronger and more volatile rainy seasons, the study said.


Do other studies bear this out?
Broadly yes. The Indian government’s first ever climate change assessment, released in 2020, said that overall monsoon precipitation fell around six percent from 1951-2015.
It said that there was an “emerging consensus” that this was down to aerosol pollution considerably offsetting the expected rise in rainfall from global warming.
With continued warming and lower aerosol emissions, it projected more rain and greater variability by the end of this century, together with “substantial increases” in daily precipitation extremes.


What will this mean for people?
India’s 2021 monsoon was a case in point: June rain was above normal, in July it fell, August was nearly a drought and in September precipitation returned with a vengeance.
Several hundred died in floods in Maharashtra in July and in Gujarat in September. The same month a cloudburst turned the streets of Hyderabad into raging rivers in just two hours.
But by October farmers in parts of northern and northeastern India were reeling from drought while elsewhere the monsoon took longer than usual to withdraw.
“More chaos in the Indian monsoon rainfall will make it harder to adapt,” Anders Levermann from PIK and Columbia University told AFP last year.