(Photo by Asim Hafeez/
Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Above, a worker at the New Jhoolay Lal Cotton Ginners & Oil Mills in Sanghar district, Sindh province, Pakistan, holds cotton bales damaged from summer floods.
Pakistan is the world’s fifth-largest cotton producer and home to more glaciers than anywhere else in the world, save the polar regions. The summer’s searing heat wave accelerated the already seismic glacial melt in Pakistan caused by global warming. Combined with heavy monsoon rains, the runoff put more than a third of the country under water, killed more than 1,000 people, displaced approximately 33 million people—and destroyed nearly 45 percent of the country’s cotton output.
Read more stories by Marcie Bianco.