Pakistan seeks help with $16 billion flood rebuilding at UN conference

Pakistan and the United Nations are holding a major conference in Geneva on Monday aimed at marshalling support to rebuild the country after devastating floods in what is expected to be a major test case for who pays for climate disasters.

Record monsoon rains and melting glaciers last September displaced some 8 million people and killed at least 1,700 in a catastrophe blamed on climate change, Reuters reports.

Most of the waters have now receded but the reconstruction work, estimated at around $16.3 billion, to rebuild millions of homes and thousands of kilometres of roads and railway is just beginning and millions more people may slide into poverty.

Additional funding is crucial to Pakistan amid growing concerns about its ability to pay for imports such as energy and food and to meet sovereign debt obligations abroad.

However, it is far from clear where the reconstruction money will come from, especially given difficulties raising funds for the emergency humanitarian phase of the response which is around half funded, according to UN data.

At the COP27 meeting in Egypt in November, Pakistan was at the forefront of efforts that led to the establishment of a "loss and damage" fund to cover climate-related destruction for countries that have contributed less to global warming than wealthy ones.

An International Monetary Fund(IMF) delegation will meet Pakistan's finance minister on the sidelines of the conference, a spokesperson of the lender said on Sunday, as Pakistan struggles to restart its bailout programme.

The IMF is yet to approve the release of $1.1 billion originally due to be disbursed in November last year, leaving Pakistan with only enough foreign exchange reserves to cover one month's imports.