AFP

His head haloed by a whirlwind of mosquitoes, Aamir Hussain stands on the roof of his home in southern Pakistan surveying the fetid floodwaters all around.

Four months after the start of record monsoon rains linked to climate change, the standing water has curdled into a pestilent soup breeding malaria, cholera and dengue.

The UN has warned of a “second wave” of catastrophe, with the risk that deaths from water-borne disease and malnutrition will outstrip the 1,700 drowned and electrocuted in the initial cascade.

As dusk arrives in Hussain’s submerged village in Dadu district of Sindh province, so do the bugs, and the gamble that they will infect his wife and two children.

“The mosquitoes bite a lot and we fall sick,” said the 25-year-old, atop a brickwork compound framing a courtyard awash with putrid, sucking mud.

His brother, who shares this home, has already ventured off the roof to treat his sick children at hospital with borrowed cash.

“Some of our nets are torn now so we are worried,” said Hussain, whose infant son has fallen ill.

Sindh has been worst-hit by the catastrophic flooding which put a third of Pakistan underwater, displaced eight million, destroyed or damaged two million homes, crippled 1,500 hospitals and clinics and caused an estimated $28 billion in damages.

– Cascading disaster –

Climate change minister Sherry Rehman said this week that more than 20 million people are still in need “with futures that are entirely precarious”. Eight million of those require “urgent medical services”, she said.

Zahida Mallah has already been tipped over the edge.

In a bleak camp south of Dadu, outside the city of Hyderabad, the 35 year-old explained she is in mourning for her twin two-month-old sons.

One died on the day AFP visited, the other around two weeks ago at a separate camp. 

They were killed by “colds”, she said, after sleeping out in the open. She was offered a tent only after it was too late.

“We just keep floundering,” she lamented.

Nearby, the city of Johi is corralled by water, accessible via a ramshackle flotilla of canoes powered by greasy petrol engines.

Residents rallied to save the city as the rains lashed down, heaving sandbags into a snaking makeshift levee. But it cannot hold back the disease.

In a desperately rundown emergency clinic, a doctor treats unresponsive seven year-old Kashaf, a suspected malaria patient lying on dirty sheets with a clutch of pharmaceuticals at her feet.

“Perhaps it’s a natural disaster, or perhaps we are being tested by God, but whatever it is we are the victims,” said her father, 20 year-old Dildar Mastoi.

Under a black scarf his daughter’s eyes have rolled back into her head. She no longer recognises her parents — doctors say a fever has affected her brain.

Barely adults themselves, her mother and father fled rising waters twice before settling in a camp where they drink from a well they suspect is contaminated by flood water.

“From early evening until dawn, throughout the whole night, the mosquitoes are overwhelming,” said Kashaf’s mother, 19 year-old Bashiran Mastoi. “When the night approaches we start to worry.”

“Life at the camp is immensely miserable,” she said in a vigil on her child’s sickbed.

Medic Manzoor Shahani said there has been a “surge” in malaria, gastro illnesses, and dengue while “most of the patients are children and pregnant women”.

– ‘The hidden fever’ –

Before the floods southern Pakistan was already devastated by grinding poverty. Now aid only sporadically penetrates the patchwork swampland, while the true number of those in need has yet to even be discovered.

Doctors and officials offer contradicting figures, as they grapple to understand the scale. In Dadu the official death toll is just 23, but everyone privately agrees the real figure must be far higher.

“This is devastation beyond the government’s approach,” said provincial health monitor Faheem Soomro, as young doctors tally the day’s fresh patients at a boardroom table.

Half of malaria tests are coming back positive and most homes have suspected cases. 

Sindh has recorded 208,000 cases of malaria so far this year, a dramatic rise from 2021, when cases were reported.

Left untreated — as it certainly is in the stranded swathes of Sindh — malaria can quickly turn fatal. In a normal year there are 50,000 deaths from malaria in Pakistan.

Soomro describes it as “the hidden fever”. It has vague flu-like symptoms — as the mosquito-borne parasite enters the liver and bloodstream, in severe cases swelling the brain.

The healthcare disaster is most easily monitored in camps — there are 19 in Dadu — where the luckiest of the displaced live in row upon row of hundreds of simple A-frame tents.

In one of the “tent cities” home to around 5,000, residents clamour for treatment in a blustery gazebo where doctors test them for malnutrition and malaria, as others offer vaccinations and female health advice.

Soomro estimates 60 percent of the displaced once stayed in camps like this, but three quarters of those have scattered back to the sodden hinterlands to remake their lives, often out of reach of aid efforts.

Outside the camps the dispersed can be seen everywhere — in tents and on daybeds clustered by highways and near scummy stagnant lakes.

– ‘Unaware’ victims –

The monsoon torrent came after Pakistan was seared by a spring heatwave, with pockets of Sindh sporadically suffering temperatures of 50C (122F). 

Extreme weather events are increasing in severity as a result of climate change, scientists say.

Pakistan — the world’s fifth largest population — is responsible for only 0.8 percent of global greenhouse emissions but it’s one of the most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by global warming.

In Johi, community activist Ali Pervez laments how the worst affected Pakistanis are unable to advocate for climate justice.

“They are totally unaware,” he said.

“There is not any quality education [so] that we can easily make aware, empower our people.”

At least 19 people are confirmed dead after an avalanche struck climbers in the Indian Himalayas, authorities said Friday, with bad weather hampering the fourth day of search and rescue efforts.

A group of climbing trainees and instructors were caught in Tuesday’s massive snowslide near the summit of Mount Draupadi ka Danda II in the northern state of Uttarakhand. 

“Nineteen bodies have been recovered. 10 people are still missing,” state disaster agency spokesperson Ridhim Aggarwal told AFP.  

“Rescue operations have resumed for the day but are subject to weather,” she added. “The weather is bad.”

Police, disaster authorities and the Indian air force have been mobilised to help with search efforts, with 32 people successfully rescued from the mountain despite snow and rainfall.

An advance helicopter landing ground had been prepared near the site of the avalanche at 4,900 metres (16,000 feet) above sea level, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police said Thursday.

Sunil Lalwani, one of the rescued trainee climbers, credited the instructors for saving many lives.

“We were 50-100 metres from the summit with our instructors ahead of us, when suddenly an avalanche hit us and took everyone down,” Lalwani was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times on Thursday.

“It happened in a matter of seconds and we were dumped in a crevasse. We were somehow able to breathe… It’s because of them that we are alive today.”

Among the bodies recovered earlier in the week was that of climber Savita Kanswal, who had summited Everest this year.

Kanswal was an instructor with the expedition and had been feted by the climbing community for summiting the world’s highest peak and nearby Makalu in just 16 days — a women’s record.

– Fatal accidents common –

Fatal climbing accidents are common in the Himalayas, home to Everest and several of the world’s highest peaks.

In August, the body of a mountaineer was recovered two months after he fell into a crevasse while crossing a glacier in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh. 

Last week, renowned US ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson’s body was found on the slopes of Nepal’s Manaslu peak after she went missing skiing down the world’s eighth-highest mountain.

The same day, Nepali climber Anup Rai was killed and a dozen others were injured after an avalanche on the 8,163-metre (26,781-foot) mountain. 

Although no substantial research has been done on the impacts of climate change on mountaineering risks in the Himalayas, climbers have reported crevasses widening, running water on previously snowy slopes, and the increasing formation of glacial lakes. 

On Egypt’s Red Sea coast, fish swim among thousands of newly planted mangroves, part of a programme to boost biodiversity, protect coastlines and fight climate change and its impacts.

After decades of destruction that saw the mangroves cleared, all that remained were fragmented patches totalling some 500 hectares (1,200 acres), the size of only a few hundred football pitches.

Sayed Khalifa, the head of Egypt’s agriculture syndicate who is leading mangrove replanting efforts, calls the unique plants a “treasure” because of their ability to grow in salt water where they face no problems of drought.

“It’s an entire ecosystem,” Khalifa said, knee-deep in the water. “When you plant mangroves, marine life, crustaceans and birds all flock in.”

Between the tentacle-like roots of months-old saplings, small fish and tiny crab larvae dart through the shallows — making the trees key nurseries of marine life.

Khalifa’s team are growing tens of thousands of seedlings in a nursery, which are then used to rehabilitate six key areas on the Red Sea and Sinai coast, aiming to replant some 210 hectares.

But Khalifa dreams of extending the mangroves as far “as possible,” pointing past a yacht marina some six kilometres (four miles) to the south.

The about $50,000-a-year government-backed programme was launched five years ago.

– ‘Punch above their weight’ –

Mangroves also have a powerful impact in combating climate change.

The resilient trees “punch above their weight” absorbing five times more carbon than forests on land, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The stands of trees also help filter out water pollution and act as a natural barrier against rising seas and extreme weather, shielding coastal communities from destructive storms.

UNEP calculates that protecting mangroves is a thousand times cheaper than building seawalls over the same distance.

Despite their value, mangroves have been annihilated worldwide at rapid speed. 

Over a third of mangroves globally have been lost globally, researchers estimate, with losses up to 80 percent in some coastlines of the Indian Ocean.

Mangrove expert Niko Howai, from Britain’s University of Reading, said in the past many governments had not appreciated “the importance of mangroves”, eyeing instead lucrative “opportunities to earn revenue” including through coastal development.

In Egypt’s case, “mass tourism activities and resorts, which cause pollution”, as well as boat activity and oil drilling wreaked havoc on mangroves, said Kamal Shaltout, a botany professor at Egypt’s Tanta University.

Shaltout warned that mangrove restoration efforts “will go to waste” if these threats are not addressed.

“The problem is that the mangroves we have are so limited in number that any damage causes total disruption,” he said.

– Impact of mass tourism –

There is little reliable information to indicate how much has been lost, but Shaltout said “there are areas that have been completely destroyed”, particularly around the major resort town of Hurghada.

Red Sea tourism accounts for 65 percent of Egypt’s vital tourism industry.

The scale of damage, a 2018 study by Shaltout and other researchers found, “probably far exceeds what could be replaced by any replanting programme for years to come”.

Efforts to link up replanted areas will be potentially blocked by barriers of marinas, resorts and coastal settlements.

“Mangroves are hardy, but they are also sensitive, especially as saplings,” Howai said.

“Intermingling mangrove reforestation with existing development projects is not impossible, but it is going to be more challenging.”

To be successful, Shaltout said that tourist operators must be involved, including by tasking resorts with replanting areas themselves.

“It could even come with certain tax benefits, to tell them that just like they have turned a profit, they should also play a role in protecting nature,” the botanist said.