Pakistan on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, declared a climate and agriculture emergency as authorities raced to rescue at least 1.6 million people at risk of massive flooding in downstream areas.
“We have decided to impose a climate emergency and agriculture emergency,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said.
He said this during a cabinet meeting, citing the destruction of crops and inundation of thousands of hectares of fertile land.
Rice, cotton and maize crops have been destroyed in 4,400 villages in Punjab province.
An assessment of agricultural losses will be announced next week.
A committee comprising heads of the federal and provincial governments will formulate a comprehensive plan to try to cope with the situation.
The swollen rivers, flash floods, urban inundation and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains, cloudbursts and glacial lake outbursts have killed 928 people since late June, the disaster agency said.
Nearly six million people have been affected by the floods in the northern Himalayan region, north-western mountainous terrain and the central plains so far, the UN disaster agency said.
No less than 1.6 million people are at risk of massive flooding and might need relocation or rescue.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, as the swollen rivers entered the southern province of Sindh.
“We have already evacuated around 200,000 people and are ready to rescue more,” Sindh’s Chief Minister, Murad Shah, said.
Rescue workers and soldiers backed by boats and helicopters have already evacuated more than two million people in the central province of Punjab.
This includes nearly 300,000 in the past two days, the regional disaster agency said.
Schools were closed and streets were deserted in the port city of Karachi on Wednesday after heavy rains overnight that flooded much of the metropolis.
The monsoon, a season of heavy rains in South Asian regions that runs from July to September, has been unpredictable and harsher in recent years due to climate change.
It has killed thousands of people yearly and affecting millions.
More than 2,000 people were killed in major floods that hit Pakistan in 2022, including subsequent diseases.