As floodwaters carve relentless paths through South Punjab, submerging villages and livelihoods, and now approaching with higher intensity through the Indus to Sindh, Pakistan stands at a crossroads.
The 2025 floods — perhaps as devastating as the 2022 disaster but with even bigger dimensions, making them among the worst in recent history — have claimed over 842 lives (some sources estimate over 1,000), displaced 1.2 million people, affected more than 4m, mainly in Punjab, and threatened economic losses between $6–10 billion thus far.
Yet, amid the chaos of rescue and relief, a powerful opportunity emerges to document the crisis in real time, harnessing community voices — especially women’s — to build a resilient future. By blending local insights with global best practices, Pakistan can transform this disaster into a catalyst for systemic change.
A nation under water
Perhaps, this is bigger than a war — those have dry spaces and pauses. But here, the battle is against water that advances like a warfront; it is everywhere.
The 2025 monsoon has unleashed a dual assault of river and rain-induced flooding. In South Punjab, districts such as Multan, Bahawalpur, and Dera Ghazi Khan are inundated, with over 4m residents affected and 1,400 villages submerged under 5–10 feet of water.
In Sindh, the Guddu Barrage braces for peak inflows of 800,000 cusecs by September 10 or 11, putting downstream areas and 1.6 million katcha residents on high alert. Urban centres — Lahore, Rawalpindi, Karachi, and Hyderabad — face flash floods, with clogged drains and 50 per cent higher runoff due to rapid urbanisation.
The echoes of the current crisis bring back bad memories of the 2022 floods, when a third of the country was submerged and 33 million people were displaced. But here’s the scary part: the intensity of the deluge this year — driven by climate change and upstream water coming from India through a destined gradient — exposes persistent vulnerabilities.
Over 100,000 animals have perished, cotton crops face 20pc–30pc losses, and school closures disrupt critical exams. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) reports over 155,000 rescues in Punjab alone, yet bottlenecks in boats, helicopters, and supply chains underscore systemic gaps.
The power of real-time planning
Disasters demand more than reactive aid; they require strategic foresight. The World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) Integrated Flood Management (IFM) framework emphasises real-time data to balance prevention with sustainable development.
By documenting bottlenecks, inundation patterns, and community experiences now, Pakistan can lay the groundwork for resilient recovery. “Every crisis is a classroom,” says Naseer Memon, a water and disaster risk reduction expert. “Notes taken today — on what fails, what works, and who’s most affected — can rewrite tomorrow’s playbook.”
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s (UNDRR) Sendai Framework also underscores this, advocating iterative learning to bridge institutional silos.
In Pakistan, where coordination between federal and provincial disaster management authorities often falters, structured documentation can align efforts. The Global Flood Partnership’s worldwide monitoring network shows how satellite data, like Nasa’s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission, predicts patterns, optimising resources.
Similarly, the Google Flood Hub provides important insights and forecasting for floods.
Listen to the women
Women, comprising 60pc of relief and rescue camp populations, face unique burdens: childcare, limited mobility, and risks of gender-based violence. The World Bank’s research reveals women are disproportionately excluded from early warnings and resources, increasing their vulnerability.
In 2022, Pakistan’s failure to include local voices led to mismatched aid; 2025 demands better. Women’s miseries have been reported from Lahore camps and many other places.
Focus groups in camps — prioritising women — reveal sanitation woes, privacy deficits, and hygiene gaps. Social media posts on various platforms call for resilient housing and disaster risk reduction (DRR) training, echoing Bangladesh’s success with community-led adaptations like elevated homes and floating gardens, which cut flood damages by 40pc.
This is the time to do it differently for women, children, and the elderly. It should go beyond words and rituals.
Bottlenecks and breakthroughs
Rescue operations highlight both triumphs and failures. The NDMA’s app-based alerts enabled 259 swift rescues, but insufficient boats and helicopter shortages stranded families in South Punjab. Supply chains crumble under flooded roads, delaying the UN’s $5 million aid package. Medical facilities strain under 1,117 injuries, with cholera risks looming due to weak disease surveillance.
In urban areas, flash floods paralyse markets like Hyderabad’s, worsened by 10–14-hour electricity breaks. These power outages during rain are universal across Pakistan’s cities and towns, with some areas going without power for days. This aggravates urban flooding, as pumping becomes hampered.
The white elephant of the Water and Power Development Authority has given birth to Hesco and other monsters that have entangled the entire energy supply network. The distribution networks need to be overhauled with complete management change. This must be considered an important step for better preparedness for disaster management, including flood management, in Pakistan.
Structural issues — leaky canals losing 30–40pc of water, clogged urban drains, nonexistent stormwater management for cities — and non-structural ones, such as absolutely weak land-use planning with no concept of geographical planning, and deforestation across the country, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan, amplify the crisis.
Alleged upstream water releases from India add geopolitical strain; this necessitates basin-level planning for both flood and drought management. Inundation patterns show rapid pluvial buildup in South Punjab’s low-lying farmlands, escalating within 24–48 hours, with 2025 volumes 20pc higher than 2022.
Global lessons, local solutions
So when it comes to learning, there are international case studies that offer blueprints for Pakistan.
Japan’s Yokohama uses public-private detention systems to manage 82 mm/hour rainfall, slashing runoff by 75pc via permeable pavements. Jakarta’s tidal barriers and community warnings tackle pluvial-fluvial overlaps, while Shenzhen’s spatial planning curbs urban inequities. Bangladesh’s community radio saved lives during the 2013 cyclones, and its Netherlands-backed Delta Plan 2100 pioneers sustainable flood defences. Bangladesh’s flood experiments foster collaborative capacity-building, a model for Pakistan’s fragmented response.
The Associated Programme on Flood Management (APFM) champions participatory vulnerability assessments, ensuring gender equity. A global review of 80 documents stresses context-specific research to empower communities. Pakistan’s 2022 “build back better” approach — elevated housing — reduced future damages; broader inclusion of locals closed response gaps.
To operationalise real-time planning, stakeholders can adopt this checklist, inspired by global frameworks like the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s after-action reviews and WMO’s Integrated Flood Management tools:
- Document daily: Log rescue bottlenecks, supply chain delays, and medical gaps by PDMAs/NDMA and the Revenue Department. This needs to reflect what one observes, how people express their problems, and the important solutions they offer. Never underestimate their knowledge. Local people are the first responders. This daily diary should be available at least at the tehsil level.
- Map patterns: Use satellite data to track inundation trends, focusing on prone areas. Initiate the marking of water levels, mapping water gradient patterns and lines, and other important on-ground information that can be highly helpful for planning.
- Engage communities: Seek input from communities, especially women, to capture needs, prioritising hygiene and safety.
- Assess infrastructure: Identify failing assets, noting where, why, and to what extent.
- Integrate urban-rural plans: Address pluvial-fluvial synergies via climate modelling. As some towns have been flooded first by rainfall and then by river overflows during emergent conditions, prepare a long list at the tehsil level.
- Evaluate and learn: This should be a weekly task for one or two hours by respective PDMAs and the revenue departments. The regular meetings carried out in different offices, mainly led by deputy commissioners, the PDMA, or local ministers and legislators (or ministers on special duty), focus on key urgent problems, but these are rarely minuted; when done so, they provide superficial information rather than the crucial discussions that take place. This must be given time and a dedicated role so that when floodwaters recede, they provide both geographical and spatial problem and solution lists. Conduct post-flood audits to refine strategies, ensuring gender-sensitive aid.
The 2025 floods are not just a disaster — they’re a call to reimagine resilience. By weaving community voices, especially women’s, into real-time planning, Pakistan can break the cycle of devastation. Notes scribbled amid the deluge — on bottlenecks, patterns, and solutions — can become the cornerstone of a safer, stronger nation. With global wisdom and local resolve, this crisis can spark a revolution in preparedness, ensuring no flood catches us off guard again.
Header image: This aerial view shows partially submerged residential buildings following the overflowing of the Ravi River in Lahore on August 30, 2025. — AFP
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