Punjab faced its worst floods since 1988 in August this year. Waters overflowing from the Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi rivers have destroyed several villages in the State. Around the same time, at least 34 people died after intense rainfall lashed India-controlled Kashmir and several parts of Pakistan. Early in August, the village of Dharali in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand disappeared after a deluge triggered a landslide.
This was just August.
This isn’t the first time the Indian Himalayan region has suffered such catastrophe; the 2013 Kedarnath floods and the 2021 disaster in Chamoli come to mind. And at least one thread runs through all of these incidents: they were all treated as unprecedented acts of nature.
The invisible hand
Experts have already said calling every heavy-rain event a “cloudburst” risks oversimplifying the disasters.
“Most of these natural disasters are not really natural at all. They are often a combination of two factors — climate change and development,” Arun B. Shreshta, a senior advisor, Climate and Environmental Risks, at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), said.
The Himalayas are the world’s youngest mountains and are high-energy environments characterised by instability and variability. Landslides here are often triggered by heavy rainfall, slope undercutting or seismic activity.
According to ICIMOD research, the mountains are also particularly susceptible to floods, cloudbursts, glacial lake eruptions, and landslides.
Chief Justice B.R. Gavai called visuals of tree logs floating in flood waters in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, and Uttarakhand in the first week of September a “very serious issue”.
“Logs are seen flowing with the flood waters. If this goes on, we will not have any forests left. In Punjab, entire villages are inundated. Development is needed, but not at the cost of the environment and lives,” Justice Gavai observed on September 4.
No blanket plan
On July 18, the Supreme Court bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan had observed: “If things proceed the way they are as of date, the day is not far when the entire state of Himachal Pradesh may vanish in thin air from the map of India. God forbid this does not happen.”
The bench also said governments shouldn’t build revenue at the cost of ecological sustainability, and blamed human activity for worsening disasters.
“I think the Supreme Court is very much right about this,” Navneet Yadav, lead, Humanitarian Action and Disaster Risk Reduction at Caritas India, an NGO, said.
He added that development in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand can’t happen according to the same plans drafted for metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
“Every aspect of development should go through a lifecycle analysis. We should start looking at it in a completely different way, where we take into consideration the real impact of climate change,” Shreshta, who also stressed on assessing the carrying capacity of an area before implementing any project, said.
“Prior to making any major interventions in the mountains, there should be clearly defined steps in terms of an honest and independent social impact assessment in addition to a disaster impact assessment, which should go through a democratic public consultation process,” Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, added.
The disaster potential
The Hindu Kush mountains are currently being encroached on as well as hosting more tourists, infrastructure development projects, and power generation activities. Together with a paucity of proper environmental impact assessments, experts have warned that the mountains are being pushed beyond their ability to cope.
According to the Directorate of Energy of Himachal Pradesh, there are 1,144 hydropower plants in the state, of which 721 are at various stages of clearance and investigation, 180 have been commissioned, and 53 are under construction. The Centre has also sanctioned funds to build new bridges and widen roads.
Similarly, in Uttarakhand, there are 40 operational hydroelectric plants while 87 more are at various stages of planning and construction, all to boost the State’s power generation capacity.
All these construction activities entail the use of heavy equipment to cut through the mountains.
“Today, we are building highways without any attention to how they can increase disaster potential,” Thakkar said.
As the Supreme Court bench observed on July 18, the proliferation of ‘development’ work is joining hands with climate change to worsen the effects of rain and temperature changes.
On September 4, the apex court also issued a notice to the National Highways Authority of India following a petition that claimed 14 tunnels between Chandigarh and Manali turned into “death traps” during heavy rains.
The average temperature in the Indian Himalaya is already rising faster than the global average, resulting in reduced snowfall and more snow melt. When a glacier melts, the water pools into a new lake. If a rocky barrier adjacent to the lake shifts or breaks, all the water can be released into a nearby river or drain, leading to sudden and massive floods. These events are called glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).
According to ICIMOD, there were more than 25,000 classified glacial lakes in five major river basins across the Himalayas by 2018, placing communities and livelihoods downstream at more and more risk.
‘Worst kind of land’
“Infrastructure changes have to be done keeping in mind such climatic variations — GLOFs, landslides, and even droughts,” Shreshta said. “The Himalayas are at a tipping point, and we need an urgent course correction that balances economy and energy. We need nature-based solutions with the involvement of the local communities because they know the local landscape and the hazards that come with it.”
“Building climate literacy amongst the locals to drive local self-governance is important,” Yadav said. “Not just that, all the critical structures, such as hospitals and schools, must never be built in unsafe locations because they are the immediate places that house those affected by any disaster. But that is unfortunately not the reality. Most government schools are built on the worst kind of land.”
The rise in tourism has also stoked a demand for land on which to build hotels, homestays, and other facilities, and that in turn has been driving local deforestation. The deodar trees in particular are native to the region and hold the soil in place.
“When you remove them, the soil is in boulders which will soon erode out. And that erosion will increase the disaster potential of the area in terms of landslides and floods in the downstream villages,” Thakkar said.
He added that it should be possible to ‘develop’ without tearing trees down.
ruparasagna.m@thehindu.co.in
