Experts advise climate-smart planning to cope with changing weather patterns.

HYDERABAD -- Experts, academicians, rights activists and lawyers have urged the government to revive old and natural waterways and ensure climate-smart planning in the country to cope with weather patterns driven by climate change.

They said that 3.7m acres of land of Sindh was affected by recent devastating floods and it still remained submerged in water.

They said the people affected by floods were living under open sky, exposing them to different ailments which could cause death of children and newborns.

They said the government should ensure crop and livestock insurance mechanism and rebuild houses of the people who had lost their abodes in the floods.

They were speaking at a consultative meeting organised by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Hyderabad chapter to discuss issues of flood victims at local press club here the other day.

HRCP Sindh co-chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt said the HRCP talked about planning, but it was something directly linked with research institutions which were nonexistent in the country. Thus planning kept eluding people, he said, adding that Pakistan used to export wheat until 1952, but then under a planning, the agriculture sector of the country was destroyed.

He said the point whether loan offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was properly utilised or not could never be determined.

He said that rain forecast went unheeded and that led to a big disaster in the country, leaving tens of millions of people homeless.

He said that now the biggest challenge was rehabilitation of that population.

HRCP Sindh vice chairman Qazi Khizer Hayat said the commission was also holding sessions at district level to ascertain facts regarding flood-hit people.

He said that a national conference was being convened in Islamabad in December where various proposals would be presented before the government.

He said the government would be urged to provide shelter, food and clean drinking water to the population on a war footing, and dewater their villages and areas.

He called for revival of old and natural waterways in Sindh forthwith and dismantlement of all encroachments on their routes. Land should be distributed among landless farmers while the flood-hit peasantry should be compensated for the losses to their crops besides agriculture implements.

He demanded that flood-hit infrastructure should be fully rehabilitated, unemployment allowance should be given to people and women should be provided protection in...