This summer, monsoon rains have brought catastrophe across the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. Overflowing rivers have submerged thousands of villages, displaced millions of people and claimed hundreds of lives. In Pakistan’s Punjab alone, almost 2 million people have been evacuated, and the humanitarian toll continues to mount in both regions.
This summer, monsoon rains have brought catastrophe across the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. Overflowing rivers have submerged thousands of villages, displaced millions of people and claimed hundreds of lives (see go.nature.com/42qa637). In Pakistan’s Punjab alone, almost 2 million people have been evacuated, and the humanitarian toll continues to mount in both regions.
The 2025 floods underscore the fact that India and Pakistan share a climate, a river basin and increasingly extreme weather — none of which respects borders. Yet, despite this shared calamity, cooperation between the two countries has been limited. Mistrust has overshadowed the possibility of coordinated flood management, joint early-warning systems and cross-border disaster relief.
Cooperation on flood forecasting, river-basin management, disaster response and climate adaptation could save lives. This requires modernization of the Indus Waters Treaty — an agreement on how the two countries use water from the Indus River and its tributaries. Both nations should treat shared water not as an instrument of rivalry, but as a common asset. Ideally, an updated accord would involve a legally binding data-sharing agreement, reciprocal early-warning systems and joint flood-management infrastructure. It should also be adaptive, so cooperation can evolve as environmental conditions shift.
Sources:
Nature
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03187-1 .
Provided by the IKCEST Disaster Risk Reduction Knowledge Service System
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