By Thin Lei Win and Nita Bhalla
BANGKOK, Oct 13 (AlertNet) - After suffering the biggest natural disaster in the country's history with floods that made 10 million people homeless, Pakistan is looking to build back better but will require international assistance, Pakistan's top diplomat in Bangkok said on Wednesday.
"It's important to keep in mind that disasters cannot be prevented but better preparedness can help reduce the damage and mitigate the worst impact," Pakistan Ambassador to Thailand Sohail Mahmood said on the International Day for Disaster Reduction.
Improving building standards and embankments to control the flow of water, as well as regional assessments to understand risks and the possibility of diverting water are some of the plans being considered as the authorities consider the damage, Mahmood said.
With landslides in China and flooding in neighbouring countries, an assessment to understand whether there are issues that make the region more prone to disasters is needed, he told AlertNet.
"And if that is the case, we would need a set of preparations and measures to deal with that," he said.
The floods, which have disrupted the lives of more than 20 million people, is one of the biggest humanitarian crises in recent years -- bigger than the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 or the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, according to the United Nations.
"The total area affected by the floods has been estimated to be 116,000 square kilometers, this is almost 20 percent of the country but in size larger than UK," the ambassador told an audience at the U.N.' Asia Pacific headquarters.
From the far north to the deep south of the country, large swathes of land have been submerged, villages and towns decimated and millions of people have been living in makeshift camps.
"The scale of this disaster is so huge that no developing country alone can handle it, " he said, and international support is required to reinforce national efforts.
The United Nations has appealed for $2 billion but international donors have so far only committed 34 percent of the funds required.
BIG BILL?
The floods inflicted $9.5 billion in damage to property, crops and infrastructure, according to an Asian Development Bank and World Bank assessment, Finance Ministry officials said on Wednesday.
Aside from trying to cope with that direct damage, the government may face total recovery costs of $30 billion, Finance Ministry officials said, although they had not seen the report.
Once the official reports are published "we would certainly hope that international community would... come up up with the requisite resource level required to help those people who have been deeply affected," said Mahmood.
He said while the waters have receded in some areas and efforts have been made to ensure against the outbreak of major diseases, an outbreak of malaria is a concern.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that nearly 300,000 suspected malaria cases, including some confirmed cases of a severe form of the disease, had been recorded in flood-affected areas since July.
"Luckily so far we have been able to stem the outbreak of cholera," he said, "but again this challenge remains and we cannot afford to be complacent."
Two of the major challenges now are to help the affected population with livelihoods - most of the households in the area had been farmers - and to restore land registry records which have been washed away to avoid possible land disputes, Mahmood said.
Aid workers have said that integrating disaster risk reduction awareness and programmes into reconstruction efforts is key in reducing Pakistan's vulnerability.
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