With stateside media focused on the unprecedented flooding and cascading industrial disasters [9] from Hurricane Harvey in Texas, the far great deluges that have struck three countries in South Asia are going largely unreported. The death toll is estimated at 1,200 [10] after weeks of unusually strong monsoon rains affecting India, Bangladesh and Nepal. According to the Red Cross, 14 million people have been affected by flooding in India; more than seven million in Bangladesh, and 1.5 million in Nepal. The United Nations [11] puts the total number of those impacted by floods and landslides at a total nearly double that, of 41 million.
According to the Red Cross [12], "Vast swaths of land across all three countries are under water... Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their homes and their livelihoods. Many medical facilities, schools, markets and other essential services are submerged."
Although the monsoon is an annual event, this year's rains have been far worse than usual. In India, half the huge state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 220 million people, is under water.
In the eastern state of Bihar, "People didn't have much time to get out," said Hanna Butler [13] at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRCRC [14]). "More traditional homes have been wiped out and concrete homes have also been ripped from their foundations." In India's largest city, Mumbai, which is home to some 20 million people—and is largely built on reclaimed land—schools and colleges are shut, with the city's transport system "in chaos [15]."
In Bangladesh, at least 134 people have died and 700,000 homes have been impacted [16], with more than eight million affected. A third of the country is now subject to flooding. "This is the severest flooding in a number of years," said Matthew Marek, head of disaster response in Bangladesh for the IFRCRC, who recently flew over the country. "I could not find a single dry patch of land. Farmers are left with nothing, not even with clean drinking water."
Reaz Ahmed, director of the Bangladesh Department of Disaster Management, told [17] CNN, "This is not normal… Floods this year were bigger and more intense than the previous years."
In Nepal, 150 people have been killed and some 90,000 homes destroyed. An IFRCRC representative told the New York Times [16] from Kathmandu, "We hope people won't overlook the desperate needs of the people here because of the disasters closer home."
That disaster is Superstorm Harvey. But in both cases, climate change is almost certainly exacerbating the problem. As one commentator wrote in the Pacific Standard [18]: "Climate change appears to be intensifying the region's monsoon rains. Rising sea surface temperatures in South Asia, for example, led to more moisture in the atmosphere, providing this year's monsoon with its ammunition for torrential rainfall—much the same way abnormally high water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico intensified Harvey before it stalled over Texas." (EcoWatch [19], Aug. 31)
