How Do We Recover From the Worst Floods in Pakistan's History?

09/04/22 • 43 min

Tahir Andrabi unpacks the stages of disaster recovery that Pakistan will go through. We use his experience working on the 2005 earthquakes to think through what an effective flood relief and rehabilitation effort will look like. We talk about what the long-term effects might be on livelihoods and on health and education outcomes, and the interventions that can help minimize these effects.

Tahir is the Stedman-Sumner Professor of Economics at Pomona College. He was the inaugeral Dean of the LUMS School of Education, and a co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan. It's his research on education that has achieved the most prominence, but the reason I'm talking to him for this episode is his work on disaster recovery in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.

Some links to what we talked about:

An archived version of RISE-PAK, the information aggregation portal developed by Tahir and his collaborators to aid recovery efforts following the 2005 earthquake.
Tahir's paper (with Benjamin Daniels and Jishnu Das) on the effects of the 2005 earthquake on income, education, and health outcomes.
Floods Impact Assessment by Uzair Younis and Ammar Khan, the source for the $13B damage estimate we discussed.
Abida Parveen's rendition of Ghalib's "Yeh Na Thi Hamari Qismat", from which Tahir quotes a couplet to illustrate Pakistan's climate crisis.

Some links to what we talked about:

An archived version of RISE-PAK, the information aggregation portal developed by Tahir and his collaborators to aid recovery efforts following the 2005 earthquake.
Tahir's paper (with Benjamin Daniels and Jishnu Das) on the effects of the 2005 earthquake on income, education, and health outcomes.
Floods Impact Assessment by Uzair Younis and Ammar Khan, the source for the $13B damage estimate we discussed.
Abida Parveen's rendition of Ghalib's "Yeh Na Thi Hamari Qismat", from which Tahir quotes a couplet to illustrate Pakistan's climate crisis.

Previous Episode

What Explains Pakistan's Economic Crisis and How to Solve it?

Asim Khwaja walks us through Pakistan's current economic crisis, and why the real solutions lie in long-term productivity increases. In the process, he also tells us what he learnt from a 5th grader during his recent visit to Pakistan, and on the important role that optimism plays both at a personal and structural level.
This episode was recorded before floods started wreaking havoc across the entire country. Here is a list of Pakistan and US-based charities involved in flood relief efforts. Please donate generously.
Asim Khwaja is the Director of the Center for International Development and the Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP).
Some links to what we talked about:

Atif Mian's and Asim's own Twitter threads on the causes of the economic crisis.
Asim's Twitter thread about his field trip where he met the budding brain surgeon.
Asim mentioned my research on what politicians know about citizens. Here is a blog about it and here is the full paper.
Asim complained that I asked him about everything but his own research. Until I ask him about it in a future episode, you can read about it here.

Next Episode

Why is Housing Unaffordable in Pakistani Cities?

I talk to Fizzah Sajjad about why affordable housing in Pakistani cities remains an elusive policy dream. We talk about the reasons why there is so much unmet demand for housing, about the harms of speculative investment in housing, and how the Naya Pakistan Housing Program falls short of its objectives. Fizzah also draws on her comparative expertise to bring in lessons that Pakistan can learn from other countries.
Fizzah Sajjad is a PhD Candidate in Human Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics, where she's currently doing research on speculative practices in real estate. FIzzah is an MIT-trained urban planner, and has been working in this space for almost ten years both as a researcher and a practitioner.
Some links to what we talked about:

The official website of the Naya Pakistan Housing Program.
Fizzah references this UCLG report on Rethinking Housing Policies when discussing housing policy lessons from other countries.
The Invisible Cities blog on Tanqeed that Fizzah used to work on. She references this post by Smita Rawoot in particular.

Fizzah's recommendation: