A Himalayan blunder

There was no dearth of prognostications from geologists, seismologists, environmentalists, anti-developmentalists, and advocates of ‘sustainable development’ that Joshimath represents a blinkered vision of mindless development, but the government chose to look the other way. The government’s primary impulse now, after cracks appeared in more than 700 houses in the small Himalayan town earlier this month, is to suppress facts.

Of the two distinct geo-environmental and cultural entities, the Garhwal Himalaya and the Kumaon Himalaya, the former, comprising seven districts (Garhwal Chamoli, Pauri, Rudraprayag, Tehri, Uttarkashi, Dehradun, and Haridwar), is more fragile, steep, and rugged. The receding glaciers in the Uttarakhand Himalayas—there are around 900 glaciers in the Uttarakhand section of the Himalayas, covering approximately 2,857 sq km of their geographical area—have left behind enormous sediment in areas above 2,500 metres, which have the potential to generate destructive floods under unusual weather events as the climate becomes warmer.

It is not without reason that the entire Himalayan Hindu Kush mountain region, part of the so-called “Third Pole,” spanning more than half a dozen countries, including China, and containing the world’s third-largest repository of glacial ice, is critical to the fate of more than a billion people. Experts have long emphasised the importance of not only routinely monitoring glacial lakes but also incorporating disaster risk assessment into development planning. That Joshimath is made to pay the price of unchecked development despite the delicate environmental factors such as climate change and frequent natural disasters that militate against it points to a criminal oversight.

What is to be blamed when one has climate change, glacial melt, sedimentation, and a slew of other environmental factors to blame? Human activity exacerbates an already vulnerable ecosystem, threatening not only Joshimath but the entire state of Uttarakhand. And when we blame the humans, we are faced with many natural hazards that can be classified broadly as geophysical (volcanic activities, earthquakes, landslides), hydrometeorological (tropical storms, droughts, floods), and biological (pandemics, epidemics), but it is the anthropogenic hazards, including human-induced events such as environmental degradation, climate change, the mining of non-renewable resources, and scientific hazards (such as Bhopal and Chernobyl), where we are directly complicit.

How? Ecology suffered when hydropower and erratic, unregulated construction of large infrastructure projects, roads, and bridges were allowed on crumbling, landslide-prone ridges and steep slopes; buildings were raised in the flood plains of rivers, their “natural” terrain; through large-scale deforestation and reckless mining of riverbeds for sand despite high earthquake vulnerability; and through activities that accumulated construction debris, leading to a change of land contours and flows of streams and rivers.

Of all these, indiscriminate building of hydroelectric dams—Uttarakhand’s glacier-fed rivers make it an attractive area for hydropower projects—involving drilling huge tunnels in the hills by blasting rocks, placing enormous turbines in the tunnels, destroying soil-binding vegetation to build water channels and other infrastructure, laying transmission lines, and carelessly dumping excavated muck has been the most damaging.

Following the Kedarnath floods in 2013, there were talks on ways to implement the recommendations of the Uttarakhand Action Plan on Climate Change (UAPCC), formulated in accordance with the principles and guidelines of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC). The statement on the Uttarakhand Catastrophe by India Climate Justice, endorsed by a number of organisations, demanded action on a number of grounds and offered valuable suggestions for integrating adaptation measures into relief and risk reduction agendas, the foremost of which was to halt construction of dams until a comprehensive review of the planning and construction of dams in the entire Indian Himalayas is undertaken, to stop the use of explosives in all works related to infrastructure development, and to enforce a river regulation zone with strictures on construction of any permanent structure within 100 metres of any river.

Provisos to retreat to a “low carbon pathway of development that has equity, decent employment, and sustainability at its core” and to “put in place prior adaptation measures not just for the mountainous regions but beyond, the coastal and the drought-prone interiors as well,” while insisting that “the residents and their organisations are thoroughly consulted in a democratic plan on climate change, in the revival of the local hill economy, and the generation of decent employment,” sounded too lofty for a country keen on ignoring catastrophes and shy of learning from its past mistakes.

In the aftermath of the 2013 floods in Kedarnath that claimed some 5000 lives, the Ravi Chopra Committee on Hydropower Projects in the Uttarakhand Himalaya was formed under the orders of the Supreme Court to investigate the viability of hydropower projects, according to which the government had plans to harness approximately 27,000 megawatts (MW) of potential hydropower from its rivers by constructing approximately 450 hydropower projects. The 17-member expert committee, set up to examine the role of 24 such proposed hydroelectric projects in the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi basins, which contain the Ganga and several tributaries, found that 23 projects would have an “irreversible impact” on the ecology of the region.

According tothe science and environment fortnightly Down To Earth, 92 projects with a total installed capacity of approximately 3,624 MW have been commissioned currently, and approximately 38 projects are under construction, of which nearly 22 are planned above an elevation of 3,000 metres in areas vacated by the glaciers. As late as August 2021, the Environment Ministry disclosed in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court that it had permitted seven hydroelectric power projects, which are reportedly in advanced stages of construction, to go ahead.

One of them is the 512 MW Tapovan Vishnugadh project in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, that was damaged by a flood in February 2021, claiming 200 lives. Cause and effect are blurred when many believe that the 2021 flash floods—which washed away the Rishiganga mini-hydropower project—were the trigger to Joshimath’s present-day troubles. It has been cited ad nauseam how the construction and planning of hundreds of (small, medium, and large) dams across the Himalayan states, from Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the northern Himalayas to Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in the east, have undermined an already fragile ecosystem and destroyed biodiversity.

Livelihood questions are secondary to the urgency of saving lives in view of the plain geological fact that the Himalayan mountains are like pressure cookers, with a devastating potential to wreak havoc on the lives of people should anthropogenic activities come to heavily impinge upon their natural behaviour. At the end of the day, an economy that seeks to develop at the expense of the lives of people is a blood economy. Stop exploiting the Himalayas in the name of harnessing their potential.

(The writer is a Kolkata-based commentator on geopolitical affairs, development and cultural issues)