U.N. Secretary General António Guterres likened the recent flood in Pakistan — which has reportedly killed more than 1,100 people and impacted 33 million others — to a "monsoon on steroids" Tuesday, while also warning other corners of the world against environmental destruction.
While announcing a flash $160 million appeal for the flood-ravaged country, Guterres said the Pakistani people are encountering "the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding."
Guterres continued: "As we continue to see more and more extreme weather events around the world, it is outrageous that climate action is being put on the back burner as global emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising, putting all of us — everywhere — in growing danger.
"Let's stop sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by climate change. Today, it's Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country."
On Tuesday, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif characterized this kind of destruction as unprecedented during his political career.
Making matters worse, Sharif said that Pakistan's food shortage has been further exacerbated by the floods, while adding the price of onions and tomatoes have "skyrocketed."
Sharif also pledged that "every penny of aid" sent to Pakistan "will reach the needy."
The current Pakistan flood drew comparisons to the country's flood disaster from 2010.
Randolph Kent, executive director of the Humanitarian Futures initiative, said disasters now are "far more interactive" than in the past.
"Hundreds of millions of people will be vulnerable to a whole host of events," Kent said about the 2010 Pakistan flood. "What we are creating is a series of crisis drivers that impact on each other."
For the 2010 flood, water reportedly came flowing down from the mountain ranges and ravaged some of the most densely populated regions in the world.
The Himalayas and the Hindu Kush "feed 10 major river systems, including the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Yangtze, Mekong and Yellow rivers and, of course, the rivers now flooding Pakistan," according to an Associated Press report from 2010.
At the time, the AP reported that one-fifth of the world's population lived in proximity to the rivers.
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