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In Pakistan, the flood of July and August, 2010, caused unprecedented damage and threatened human lives on a national scale including the provinces of Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh, and the Azad Jammu and Kashmir. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, specifically, damage was inflicted in the districts of Chitral, Dir, Swat, Kohistan, Mansehra, Charsadda, Nowhshera, Peshawar, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan. The flood took a heavy toll of human lives and severely impacted a wide-range of infrastructure including tourist hotels and centres, livestock, agriculture, forests, and wildlife. By August, 2010, the value of damage caused could not yet be assessed because, in much of the area floodwater had not yet receded and a significant proportion of the area remains inaccessible.

The damages caused to natural forests, wildlife and their habitats, rangelands, and aquatic flora and fauna has not been considered by any organisation at this stage due to inaccessibility, lack of expertise, lack of baseline information, and lack of awareness of natural resources-livelihood nexus. It is obvious that ultimately the natural resources have to bear the brunt of the damages caused by the flood in one way or the other ranging from extraction of timber, firewood, and fodder to earning cash from sale of forests and wildlife. The flood has also caused direct damages to natural environment and natural resources including washing out of forest land, killing of wildlife, washing out of indigenous aquatic fauna, spreading of exotic flora and fauna, spreading of epidemic diseases, increase in pollution, and destruction of habitats.