'I've never seen anything like this': Angelina Jolie visits flood-ravaged Pakistan and calls for more international aid as she meets victims

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Published on Wednesday, 30 November -0001 00:00

Written by Daily mail

            Hollywood star and humanitarian Angelina Jolie has said the flood disaster in Pakistan should be a 'wake-up call' for the world regarding climate change, calling for more international aid after meeting with victims.Pakistan has been lashed by unprecedented monsoon downpours that flooded a third of the country - an area the size of the United Kingdom - and killed nearly 1,600 people, according to the latest government figures.More than seven million people have been displaced, many living in makeshift tents without protection from mosquitoes, and often with little access to clean drinking water or washing facilities.'I've never seen anything like this,' said Jolie, who previously visited Pakistan to meet the victims of the devastating 2010 floods and a deadly 2005 earthquake, in footage released on Thursday.'I am absolutely with you in pushing the international community to do more... I think this is a real wake-up call to the world about where we are at,' she told a meeting of civil and military officials in the capital Islamabad.'Climate change is not only real and it's not only coming, it's very much here.'Jolie, who represents the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), visited southern Sindh province, one of the worst-affected areas, where she met with displaced flood victims living in camps.The United Nations has warned of a 'second disaster' from diseases such as dengue, malaria, cholera and diarrhoea, as well as from malnutrition.'I have been speaking to people and thinking that if enough aid doesn't come, they won't be here in the next few weeks, they won't make it,' said Jolie.Scientists have linked the record-breaking monsoon rains to climate change.In February, the UN released its gravest report on climate change yet, saying the window of opportunity to save the planet is 'rapidly closing.' The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report claimed that rising temperatures are now affecting all living things. The report said if global warming isn't limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being 'potentially irreversible'.'The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,' the report said. Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming's impacts, it warns, 'will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.' Today's children who may still be alive in the year 2100 are going to experience four times more climate extremes than they do now even with only a few more tenths of a degree of warming over today's heat. But if temperatures increase nearly 2 more degrees Celsius from now (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) they would feel five times the floods, storms, drought and heat waves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC.Already at least 3.3 billion people's daily lives 'are highly vulnerable to climate change' and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, the report says.

 source : Daily mail