Every monsoon, Pakistan braces for flooding, and each year the outcome is tragically familiar: homes submerged, families displaced, and livelihoods destroyed. Yet the central issue is not the rainfall itself, but the persistent failure to prepare for it. Floods are not new, and neither are the warnings. Floods are a recurring natural phenomenon, but in Pakistan they become catastrophic because early warnings rarely reach communities, institutions respond too late, and trust in official systems remains fragile. This lack of preparedness and inefficiency, rather than the floods alone, explains why losses continue to escalate year after year. This year is no different. By late August 2025, more than 785 people had already died and over a million were displaced, while entire districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were left underwater; leaving people displaced, enduring hunger, the constant fear of losing everything and the stress of rebuilding their whole lives. The cost is not just in billions of rupees lost; it is lives broken and futures washed away.
Take a look across the border at Bangladesh. It is a country that should, on paper, be drowning far worse than us. Nearly 80% of its land is floodplain, and its population density is among the highest in the world. If any country should be a case study in helplessness, it is Bangladesh. And yet, it has flipped the script. Instead of surrendering to the monsoon, Bangladesh has built one of the most effective flood early warning systems in the developing world, becoming a major success among other South Asian countries prone to floods and climate change. On the other hand, we have Pakistan, once again facing disastrous flooding with little preparedness. What makes Bangladesh better? How did it manage to cope? It’s actually pretty simple: the warnings reach people. Forecasting data is pushed through multiple channels:SMS messages, mosque loudspeakers, community radios, even volunteers knocking door to door. Local disaster committees train villagers on evacuation routes and shelters. People don’t just hear about floods; they know what to do when the message comes.
And the results prove these efforts. A 2020 Red Crescent study found that communities receiving early warnings in Bangladesh saw significantly lower death tolls and up to 30% fewer economic losses compared to those left in the dark. Farmers were able to move livestock to higher ground, families could store food and medicine, and women and children were evacuated before waters rose. In short, time bought by a simple warning translated directly into survival. Now compare that to Pakistan. The NDMA and the Met Department issue warnings? Yes, they do! But who actually hears them? Villagers in Swat or Sindh often don’t. Alerts come late, or they’re so vague that nobody knows whether to run or stay. Some don’t trust them at all. Why? Because too many times the government has cried wolf, or shown up with help long after the waters have done their damage.
The August flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year are a painful reminder. More than 320 people were killed in hours, swept away in Buner and surrounding valleys. Videos showed families clinging to rooftops as the waters rose. Relief agencies arrived after the destruction, but is this even new? The same pattern repeats almost every other year: flood ,panic ,loss, aid appeal. We’ve seen it in the 2010 floods, in the 2022 floods, and again this year. Each time reforms are promised, big claims are made, and each time, they’re forgotten in the blink of an eye. The lesson from Bangladesh isn’t complicated. Floods can not be stopped, but the damage can. Early warning systems are not about avoiding rain; they’re about buying people the chance and the time to act. A few hours of notice can mean the difference between saving your children or losing them to the current.
So, what can Pakistan actually do—or at least try? Firstly, warnings must be localized. A generic alert issued in Islamabad carries little meaning for a farmer in Dera Ghazi Khan or a villager in Swat. Pakistan has more than 60% of its population living in rural areas, where trust in local voices remains stronger than in distant bureaucracies. Disaster committees established at the union council level could receive official alerts and spread them through familiar channels like mosque announcements, schoolteachers, or local volunteers. This approach is not only practical but also culturally credible, as people are far more likely to act on the words of a neighbour, imam, or teacher than on a vague press release.
Secondly, technology needs to be scaled up. More than 195 million mobile subscribers have been recorded in 2025, covering nearly 85% of the population, with 65% owning smartphones. In addition, over 65 million Pakistanis actively use social media platforms, making digital networks a powerful communication tool. These numbers show that SMS alerts and social media broadcasts are not futuristic ideas ,they are already within reach. Paired with traditional methods such as mosque loudspeakers, community radios, or even runners in remote villages, this system can ensure that early warnings are not just issued, but actually heard in time.
Thirdly, the agencies responsible for disaster management need stronger coordination. Currently, the NDMA, provincial disaster authorities, and the Met Office often function solely, which delays response. In 2022, the Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change itself admitted that overlapping mandates and poor coordination worsened the flood crisis. Factually, establishing a clear chain of command where a single body has the authority to issue, verify, and guarantee the delivery of alerts would not require new infrastructure. It would simply require reorganization and political will, making this recommendation both necessary and feasible.
Moreover, trust needs to be rebuilt. Surveys by the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) show that in many disaster-hit districts, less than half the population acts on government-issued warnings due to past experiences of false alarms or delayed relief. Bangladesh tackled this problem by empowering community-based volunteers to deliver official alerts, which made warnings both credible and personal. Pakistan can replicate this by formally involving NGOs, village leaders, and imams in the warning system. When messages come from people within the community, they stop feeling like government noise and feel more like a life-saving advice. And last but not least, Pakistan must stop seeing floods only through the lens of disaster relief. Each year, we spend billions patching up after destruction, when we could spend just half of it on preventive systems and measures. In 2022 alone, Pakistan suffered economic losses exceeding USD 30 billion due to floods, while annual relief and reconstruction spending continues to eat up scarce resources. Yet investing in preventive systems such as forecasting technology, community training, and early warning infrastructure would cost a fraction of that amount. Studies by the World Bank suggest that every 1 dollar spent on preparedness saves 4–7 dollars in post-disaster recovery. In Pakistan’s context, prevention is not only cheaper, but also more humane, as it prevents displacement, loss of livelihoods, and cycles of poverty that are deepening after each flood.
None of this is impossible, nor does it require reinventing the wheel. We already have a proven model to follow, so what’s stopping us? Bangladesh, once mocked as a “basket case”, is now teaching the region how to prepare for climate disasters. It chose preparedness over panic, and that’s why, despite facing fiercer floods, its death tolls and economic losses have fallen while Pakistan’s continue to climb. No country can stop the rains, nor are floods inevitable. But Pakistan does have a choice: either keep mourning predictable tragedies, or act before the water rises. The next flood is inevitable. Another round of headlines about villages washed away and children drowned is not. If Pakistan is serious about protecting its people, it must stop waiting for sympathy after the storm and start learning from Bangladesh, because it is now or never.
