Introduction

Occurrences of frequent disasters of unprecedented nature, scope, and geographic spread have emerged as a serious challenge for the international community, particularly for developing countries who are struggling to achieve their development goals. Extreme climatic events are attributed by scientists and researchers to the climate change phenomenon being experienced globally. Even developed countries like Japan find it quite challenging to manage negative impacts of disasters like the Japan earthquake / Tsunami of 2011.

Pakistan has recently been exposed to a number of mega disasters including the Earthquake of 2005, Yemyin cyclone - 2007, Ziarat Earthquake - 2008, Attabad landslide – 2010, super floods- 2010 and more recently the unprecedented rain and floods of 2011. In order to tackle such challenges there is a strong need to reduce the impact and mount an effective response of disasters through better preparedness and contingency planning. Such planning processes are required to be undertaken in a holistic manner involving all stakeholders from grass roots levels up to national levels.

Keeping in view of the past experiences and lessons learnt, the monsoon contingency planning process has been reformed by the NDMA by conducting the exercise through a bottom up approach where district level authorities were encouraged via the provincial governments, to undertake their respective hazards and risk assessment, identify needs, plan effective deployment of available resources, prepare their Contingency Plans for the worst case scenarios i.e. the possible combination of the 2010 and 2011 heavy monsoon rains and floods of unprecedented nature.

The Provincial and district tiers are encouraged to enhance their own capacities and stockpiles/requirements of relief inventories enabling them to handle the disaster situation. In that context, the provinces of Punjab and Sindh have also been requested to allocate Rs. 5 billion each for disaster management activities, similarly the provinces of KP and Balochistan have been requested to allocate Rs. 3 billion each. Likewise the State of Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJ&K) has been requested to allocate Rs. 2 billion besides Gilgit - Baltistan and FATA to make available Rs. 1 billion each to their disaster management agencies, enabling them to take all possible measures to mitigate and manage the likely negative impacts of monsoon rains induced floods.

The federal government has been requested to allocate Rs. 5 billion to the National Disaster Management Fund (NDMF) for managing preparedness and response for possible disaster threats.