Alarm bells for Himalayan glaciers

Source of water in northern and central India, the western Himalayan glaciers, are retreating at the fastest rate in India, a new government study has revealed. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 13, 2011, 24:12:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Source of water in northern and central India, the western Himalayan glaciers, are retreating at the fastest rate in India, a new government study has revealed.

The most disturbing trend from latest monitoring of 2,190 glaciers in major river basins of India has shown that glaciers in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are retreating at a much faster than the glaciers in eastern Himalayas that is northeast. Overall, 75% of glaciers are retreating.

All the 119 glaciers fall in part of Alaknanda sub-basin, a source of water for Ganga, have retreated by over 10% since 1990. Of the 29 glaciers in Gauriganga basin, another source of water for Ganga, 20 are retreating. Retreat was slowing in Bhagirathi basin but no reason was specified for that.

Ganga is mainstay for about 40% of India’s population but has witnessed lesser flow of water in recent years due to glacial retreat and construction of hydel projects in the upstream of the river.

“Ganga’s glacial basin is one of the most unstable in India,” the report based on comparison of glacial monitoring for 15 years released this week said.

Although the monitoring done by Indian Space Research Organisation does not specify by when glaciers will melt, it says that climate change is playing it role.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh said the important observation of the study was huge debris on western Himalayan glaciers, which is not witnessed in European glaciers.

The yearly snowfall is a major source of summer water for cities such as Delhi, Chandigarh, Lucknow because most of it melts before the onset of monsoons. “The falling snowfall should be matter of concern for your urban planners,” Ramesh said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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