Rising sea levels are displacing fisherfolk in Pakistan’s coastal areas, forcing them to move to higher ground, such as Karachi, where they now face saltwater intrusion and other climate impacts.
For many, this displacement is not just about losing homes, but also cultural heritage, traditions and livelihoods, with women, in particular, losing economic freedom as fishing communities decline.
The Pakistani government lacks a formal policy for the voluntary migration of climate refugees, and while efforts like mangrove restoration have been attempted, they have not significantly alleviated the fishing community’s problems.
Karachi is projected to receive 2.3 million climate migrants by 2050, primarily due to rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, and other climate-related catastrophes.
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On a chilly night in February, Umar Dablo, a resident of Pakistan’s southern coastal city Karachi, spent three nights in his flooded house after seawater gushed out from the ground.
“For three days, my kids and I remained standing,” he told Mongabay during a recent visit to his place in the Rehri Goth neighborhood in southeastern Karachi.
Whenever he talks about “home,” he remembers his days in the delta of Keti Bandar, 145 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of where he now lives. “We used to go fishing every day when I was a teenager 22 years ago,” Dablo, a member of the traditional fisherfolk community, remembers.
But for Indigenous fisherfolk like Dablo from Sindh province, who traditionally live near inland lakes and small creeks, rising sea levels are eroding their homes and livelihoods, forcing them to relocate to higher ground — only to find that climate-induced sea level rise threatens them there as well.
“For the last two decades, the sea started rising to our homes, the fish became harder to catch and freshwater was nowhere to be found,” said Dablo, who packed his clothes, kitchen utensils and other belongings and moved to Karachi with his family in 2017.
To continue his occupation, he built a house by the sea. “I built my house with the help of a loan, which I haven’t repaid yet,” he said. “Now I am in debt with no money. I fear that water will gush out from the ground anytime and I will have nowhere to go,” Dablo said.
Sea water intrusion seen in the walls of Umar Dablo's neighbourhood in Rehri Goth.
Seawater intrusion seen in the walls of Umar Dablo’s neighborhood in Rehri Goth. Images by Waqas Alam Angaria.
Rising sea levels are not just hurting communities in Pakistan, but also globally. According to a study, the global mean sea level has risen faster in the 20th century than in any previous three millennia and has accelerated since the 1960s to a rate of 3.7 millimeters (0.1 inches) per year from 2006 to 2018. In Pakistan, with the rising levels, saline water is entering cultivated land, destroying crops and mangroves, critical for fish breeding. A survey conducted in 2016 by Pakistan’s federal and provincial departments stated that more than 485,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of fertile land had been engulfed by seawater.
The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), responsible for maintaining data on fisherfolk communities and assisting them in all aspects of life, stated that the rising sea is affecting not only people’s livelihoods but their existence, too, forcing them to move to higher ground.
“More than 2,000 people have migrated to Karachi from Keti Bandar over the years,” said Mohammad Rafiq, social coordinator at PFF. Keti Bandar’s elevation is 1-2 meters (3-6.5 feet) above sea level, which is 8 m (26 ft) lower than Karachi’s coastal areas.
The number of migrants could likely be the tip of the iceberg as climate migrants, who have been facing the brunt of the land loss, have been moving to Karachi for a long time, but weren’t well documented, especially in earlier years. For example, Nawaz Dablo, a 40-year-old fisher, was born and raised in Rehri Goth. He never saw his ancestral place because he is from a family that migrated from the Indus Delta in 1976. They once lived on one of the creeks in Sindh called Mal Creek, now completely submerged.
“My grandfather told me that in Mal Creek, freshwater became too scarce,” Nawaz Dablo said. “Let alone drinking, we did not even have water to bathe our deceased,” he added.
Millions of acres of land could have been lost to sea in Sindh so far. “My father told me it is 4.3 million acres [1.7 million hectares] of land that is now underwater,” said Fatima Majeed, vice chairperson of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum and the daughter of a fisherman.
There has been a conversation about the land loss in Sindh but no survey has been conducted, and the government doesn’t have a concrete record, even as the problem is likely to get worse in the future, forcing more people like Nawaz and Umar Dablo to migrate from their ancestral lands.
“Accelerating sea level rise underscores the gravity of the situation. Seawater intrusion will likely spoil more cultivated land and increase the number of climate refugees in nearby towns and cities,” Ghulam Rasul, director-general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, told Mongabay on the phone.
Map of Karachi coastline
Millions of acres of land may have been lost to sea in Sindh so far. The map shows the fisherfolks’ traditional homelands and the area of Karachi where many have moved. Image by Emilie Languedoc/Mongabay.
The rising sea levels have not just displaced communities, but also impacted their culture, displaced migrants and those observing their way of life say. “We did not just lose our homes but our heritage, culture and history. Our traditions, our food and rituals, everything is going underwater with our land,” Majeed said.
Women are at the forefront of this impact. “Women in the fishing community used to make sea nets and helped men. It was a collective effort and women used to earn their money,” she said. “Now with the decline of fishing communities, women have lost their economic freedom,” Majeed said.
Amar Guriro, a Karachi-based environmental journalist from an Indigenous community of Sindh, has traveled extensively across the province and has been reporting on migrations, rising sea levels and fisherfolk for the past 25 years. “Since 2010, I have been visiting Sindh’s coastal villages, delta islands and creeks, and have observed that even communities far from the delta have vanished,” Guriro recounted.
Fishing communities in the area were known to rear a specific breed of dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) called the Kharai camel or Indus Deltaic camel, which could survive on seawater, eat mangroves and swim in the sea. But those camels have also become rare these days.
“Life was hard, and people used to get water from the mainland, but they thrived,” Guriro. But all that is not limited to the history books.
In the face of this challenge, youngsters such as Majeed are working with the community to preserve the culture and ensure its survival. Majeed conducts Mahigeer (an Indigenous name for fisherfolk in Urdu) fishing tours with her father where people can witness the loss of mangroves and listen to fisherfolk history while eating traditional food on the boat.
Almas Qasmani, a 22-year-old activist and a resident of Rehri Goth, conducts workshops in her neighborhood about the disappearing creeks and islands of Sindh and documents the biodiversity of mangroves. “As a daughter of a fisherman, I see it as my duty to safeguard mangrove habitat and empower girls in my community.”
Even with all these changes hitting coastal communities, the Pakistani government doesn’t have a policy for voluntary migrations. The only rehabilitation policy is for people displaced due to development projects and climate disaster events like floods and heat waves, but not rising sea levels.
There has been some work on restoring mangroves and the flow in the Indus River, both of which serve as natural defenses against rising sea levels. But that hasn’t had a measurable impact, critics say.
In 2018, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) partnered with the Sindh Forest Department to work on mangrove restoration, replanting and sustainable management. But the floods in 2020 and 2022 followed, and communities faced grave losses.
The situation looks catastrophic and dystopian, but according to Rasul, “Sustainable environmental flows through the Indus can restore the situation.”
Majeed said she believes the Indus River should be restored to its natural path because freshwater resists the sea intrusion and helps mangroves to grow. “We cannot stop climate change and sea level rise globally, but we can stop the factors that are exacerbating it,” Majeed said.
Umar Dablo came to Karachi with hope and optimism that Karachi would be his and his children’s home. The sea provides fish for his livelihood, but climate change and its impacts on the seas followed him to Rehri Goth as well.
Umar Doblo stands in front of his house in Rehri Goth.
Umar Doblo stands in front of his house in Rehri Goth. Images by Waqas Alam Angaria.
A recent study found that Karachi is expected to receive 2.3 million “climate migrants” such as Umar who are forced to leave their villages and towns by 2050, primarily due to climate catastrophes such as saltwater intrusion and rising sea levels.
While areas such as Keti Bandar suffer from flooding, coastal towns such as Karachi where Umar and his family live face the challenge of seawater incursion.
Due to the depletion of freshwater, and the Indus River’s restricted flow in the delta, the interface underground that resists saltwater is disappearing. Seawater now enters homes, and during high tide, the situation worsens.
“When it rains, water stands 1-2 feet [0.3-0.6 meters] in the houses of Rehri Goth. The Sindh government and INGOs made some efforts to facilitate families and installed Tsunami shelters and protection walls, but it was not enough,” Rafiq of PFF explained.
Where will fishermen like Umar Dablo go from there? No one knows.
Banner image: A fisherman repairs his boat on a beach in Soomar Goth, Karachi. Image by Asian Development Bank via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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Citations:
Weeks, J. H., Ahmed, S. N., Daron, J. D., Harrison, B. J., Hogarth, P., Ibrahim, T., Inam, A., Khan, A., Khan, F. A., Khan, T. M. A., Rasul, G., Rehman, N., Qureshi, A. A., & Sarfaraz, S. (2023). Sea-Level rise in Pakistan: Recommendations for strengthening Evidence-Based Coastal Decision-Making. Hydrology, 10(11), 205. doi:10.3390/hydrology10110205
Chandio, N.H., Anwar, M.M., & Mallah, Q.H. (2020). Impacts of Climate Change on Coast Line of Arabian Sea: A Case Study of Indus River Delta, Pakistan . Sindh University Research Journal – SURJ (Science Series), 50(1). doi:10.26692/surj-ss.v50i1.1312
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