If you’re looking for an emblem of why Pakistan will struggle to recover from the floods that have killed more than 1,000 this summer, consider the latest bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
The infusion of $1.16 billion might help unlock enough cash to get the country through the next couple of years — but the floods themselves have caused more than $10 billion of damage, much of which will end up boosting the country’s $255 billion in debt.
For as long as we’ve raised crops from the rich soils laid down in river valleys, floods have challenged humanity. That’s one reason that deluge myths are almost universal. The solutions haven’t changed much, either. An implausibly massive piece of capital investment saves humanity in Genesis and the Quran, in the form of Noah’s ark.