The west ignores our super-floods at its peril. Tomorrow it will be you Fatima Bhutto

Pakistan, the world’s fifth- most-populous country, is fighting for its survival. This summer, erratic monsoon rains battered the country from north to south – Sindh, the southernmost province, received 464% more rain over the past few weeks than the 30-year average for the period. At the same time, Pakistan’s glaciers are melting at a rate never seen before. These consequences of the climate crisis have combined to create a monstrous super-flood that has ravaged the country.

Ninety per cent of crops in Sindh have been damaged; Faisal Edhi, who runs Pakistan’s largest social welfare organisation, the Edhi Foundation, has warned that those who don’t die from floods risk death by starvation.

A famine is coming; the only question is how soon? Economic losses are estimated to be in excess of $30bn, 50 million people have been internally displaced, there is the threat of a malaria epidemic as floodwater lies stagnant – satellite images have shown the shocking formation of a 100k m-wide inland lake in Sindh due to overflowing from the Indus River – and a generation will be cast backwards as already meagre education and health services are violently disrupted. More than 400 children have died, and many more will .

This is a tragedy of nightmarish proportions and yet if you live outside of Pakistan, you probably haven’t heard much about it . It would seem that the rest of the world hasn’t considered that this epic humanitarian crisis is a peek into the apocalyptic future that awaits us all.

The horrors faced by the country are a clear warning of the consequences of universal and rapacious climate breakdown. Human beings have destroyed our planet; what is happening in Pakistan today is proof of that.