Authors: Adil Khan Miankhel and Shahbaz Nasir, ANU

Pakistan is experiencing its worst natural disaster.  While the human toll of the disaster is bad enough, the collateral economic damage is catastrophic. Flooding is spread over all four provinces of Pakistan, affecting 20 million people, a population equal to Australia’s, and inundating a geographical area the size of England.

Louis-George Arsenault, director of emergency services for UNICEF, says the flood crisis in Pakistan is the biggest humanitarian crisis in decades. Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), says the flood is worse than the tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the Haiti earthquake. Read more…