The cost of human actions...

Pakistan became a nation about 65 years ago when it was formed by a mutual agreement between India and Pakistan to separate the Hindu and Muslim populations that were part of the Indian nation formed after it left the colonization fostered by England until 1947.

Pakistan covers about the same geographic area as Texas... but has a population of more than 184 million. To manage their needs and their growth in the past 65 years they have executed a massive deforestation...once 46% of Pakistan was forested, today only 6% of this nation is covered by trees. As a result there is almost no natural ground cover to hold the soil and prevent erosion.

When the worst monsoon rains in recorded history came to Pakistan in 2010 they suffered, by far, the worst flooding of all time. Hundreds of thousands of livestock dead, crops washed away, land, homes, and entire towns destroyed. And beyond the loss of property, even town...was the loss of more than 1300 lives, lost to rising waters, mud slides and rapid flash flooding. While the monsoon was a natural event, and would have yielded significant damage, the majority of the devastation occurred due to Human Actions... land cleared for crops, more cleared for the largest livestock herd in the world, rivers diverted for irrigation without concern for the ability to hold to natural banks. There should be no mistaking it, man made this disaster much worse than it would have been if we had worked to maintain a sustainable environment.

The land was stripped by man, not by fire or natural disaster. Understanding that we change the equation is part of the solution for the earth's trauma. We have no choice, what happens in Pakistan impacts us half way around the world, no question, and if we are unwilling to help solve the problems of other nations we will suffer the global changes that arise from human actions...theirs and our own.

We need to help replant the trees in Pakistan, help them understand how to effectively farm their lands, distribute and control their herds, and conserve and manage their water resources so that they can survive high impact climatic events not only today, but decades into the future. Its an imperative.