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ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday demanded a collective response from the nation to climate change impacts, state-run media reported, as Pakistan reels from devastating floods that have killed at least 657 since the onset of the monsoon rains in late June. 

Deadly floods in the country’s northern region, especially its northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, have killed at least 323 people and injured 156 since Aug. 15, as per the provincial disaster management authority (PDMA). Raging hill torrents flattened several homes and swept away dozens of people in KP’s Swat, Buner, Bajaur, Torghar, Mansehra, Shangla and Battagram districts last week. Officials said several bodies were found on Sunday in the worst-hit Buner district.

Pakistan’s government launched a Monsoon Tree Plantation Drive on Monday, with state broadcaster Radio Pakistan saying more than 41 million saplings will be planted across the country during the campaign.

“President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif have called for collective response to climate change through advancement of Green Pakistan Programme,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported. 

In his message, Zardari said the Green Pakistan Programme is a national initiative to expand forest cover, rehabilitate degraded lands, restore the balance of nature and promote nature-based solutions.

“The President said the well-being and progress of any nation are grounded in the preservation of its forests and natural environment,” the statement added. 

In his message, the prime minister called on federal and provincial governments, social and religious leaders, and citizens of all ages to renew their commitment to planting more trees. 

“Tree plantation campaigns are not merely symbolic actions; they are a national duty aimed at protecting a healthy, natural environment for future generations and at preventing the destruction caused by climate change,” he added. 

The prime minister said increasing Pakistan’s tree plantation rate is “critically important” to counter the harmful effects of climate change, noting that the South Asian country ranks among nations most severely affected by climate change. 

“The recent abnormal monsoon rains and the resulting floods and loss of lives and property once again underscore the fact that proactive measures against climate change are essential for Pakistan,” he added. 

KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur on Sunday visited Buner, where he promised survivors compensation for their financial losses, urging residents of disaster-prone areas to relocate from there.

“The data of all the losses is being compiled,” CM Gandapur told reporters in Buner. “It is beyond our power to compensate the loss of lives, but we will compensate financial losses, damages to private property.”

Several people were still missing on Sunday and search efforts were focused on areas where homes were flattened by water torrents that swept down from the mountains, carrying massive boulders that smashed into houses like explosions.

The NDMA has forecast more “heavy to very heavy rainfall” in parts of the country over the next 24 hours, particularly in Islamabad, KP, Punjab and Azad Kashmir, under the current weather system.

The monsoon season brings South Asia about three-quarters of its annual rainfall, vital for agriculture and food security, but also brings destruction.

“The intensity of this year’s monsoon is around 50 to 60 percent more than last year,” NDMA chief Lt. Gen. Inam Haider told journalists in Islamabad on Sunday.

“Two to three more monsoon spells are expected until the first weeks of September.”

Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change and is contending with extreme weather events with increasing frequency. Monsoon floods in 2022 submerged a third of the country and killed around 1,700 people.

ISLAMABAD: In Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, women work cotton scraps into a traditional form of textile art, called Rilli, a vivid patchwork quilt or bedspread, as they gather in small courtyards of rural homes after long days in the fields.

They share stories of love, hardship, and resilience, with each stitch turning fabric waste into heirlooms. It is this spirit of storytelling through sustainable traditional craft that drives Sana Khan to bring sustainability and indigenous art to the core of Pakistan’s fashion industry through her brands: ‘Earthy Murkey’, which makes handbags from discarded fabrics and leather, and ‘Dhundli Zameen’, a slow-fashion prêt line.

In 2019, when Khan, a 42-year-old academician, returned to Pakistan from Australia where she had been working for years as a retail training manager, she was pleasantly surprised by the government’s “no plastic movement,” which discouraged the use of plastic bags in markets.

She recalls that it was something that was being talked about a lot in the West and she was glad that her own country was also taking such important steps toward climate conservation, inspiring her to launch Earthy Murkey.

“So, people started questioning ‘how will we carry groceries etc.?’ So, the idea got inspired from there,” Khan told Arab News. “We just got a bag stitched, it was a simple orange jute bag and introduced it to the market.”

Khan says she had already been thinking of starting such a business and the government’s initiative gave her the push.

In 2021, she expanded her brand to offer a pret line that includes kurtis made from 100 percent cotton and natural dyes, jackets and short shirts fashioned out of rejected fabric, and traditional handicrafts like rilli and block printing, providing livelihood to local artisans.

Khan, who is currently the head of Fashion and Textile department at Iqra University in Islamabad, also renamed her zero-waste clothing brand ‘Dhundli Zameen,’ which translates to Murkey Earth.

Today, she is not only reviving artisanal crafts, but also challenging the very DNA of Pakistan’s fashion industry.

“We are made-to-order [brand],” she said, gesturing to a hand-dyed kurta behind her. “One [such] piece can take 15 to 20 days just to develop before stitching.”

In fast fashion, she says, people are used to instant gratification, but slow fashion is about patience that gives one “something timeless.”

Khan recalls struggling to make sales for the first six months, but then the COVID-19 lockdowns came, and people started discovering and aligning with our “zero-waste fashion movement.”

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic which was followed by two-year lockdowns across the world. Around the same time, Khan noticed a cultural shift: friends swapping processed food for organic produce, trying yoga, or questioning chemical-laden products.

“That mindset change was a win-win for us,” she said, speaking of the time she decided to launch the clothing line. “People began to value raw products and we began turning raw textiles into wearable art.”

Khan told Arab News that her team sources rejected fabrics from various mills and converts them into fusion jackets and short kurtis, saving them from being diverted to landfills.

In their workshop in Bhit Shah, a town in Sindh’s Matiari district where the ancient art of indigo dyeing dating back to the Indus Valley civilization (lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE) still thrives, they use vegetable, spice and food dyes to craft eco-friendly clothes.

REVIVING THE CRAFT

For Khan, sustainability is inseparable from heritage preservation. She has traveled through Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and beyond to rediscover dying crafts like the chikankari embroideries of Multan and the appliqué rillies of Larkana.

“These crafts are part of our generational cultivation,” she said. “But industrial capitalism pushed them into the background. We’re trying to bring them forward again.”

CLIMATE CONNECTION

From landfill contamination to mangrove destruction caused by synthetic dye runoff in Karachi’s Qur'angi industrial zone, Khan links Pakistan’s textile waste to environmental degradation.

Pakistan is one of the dumping grounds for post-consumer textile waste i.e. unwanted clothes discarded annually from the European Union, according to a research by Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. In 2021, used clothing valued at $46 million was exported from the EU to Pakistan, reaching resale markets and dumping sites in the country.

“It is in human nature,” Khan said. “First, we destroy ourselves. Then, when we hit a breaking point, we start trying to heal. But we can’t wait until the damage is irreversible.”

A recent study by the British Council on ‘Mapping Sustainable Fashion Ecosystem in Pakistan’ found that Pakistan’s fashion and textile sectors along with their agricultural and industrial supply chains are “predominantly unsustainable.” As a significant supplier of textiles to western fashion labels and importer of discarded clothing, Pakistan disproportionately absorbs the environmental and social costs of global fashion production.

But for Khan, the goal is clear: smaller production runs, better fabric quality, more natural dyes, and garments designed to “last a lifetime,” or even to be passed down from generation to generation.

“We’ve had 200 years of fast fashion,” Khan told Arab News. “It will take at least 40 or 50 years to fully understand slow fashion again. But I see hope in Gen Z, they’re more conscious about what they wear, what they eat, what they put on their skin.”