Glacial lakes a new Himalayan threat

For millions living in Himalayan mountains the faster melting glaciers are posing a new danger - glacial lakes that may burst. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 19, 2011, 22:02:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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For millions living in Himalayan mountains the faster melting glaciers are posing a new danger - glacial lakes that may burst.

From just a few thousand lakes in mid 1900s, the number has grown over 20,000 lakes in the Himalayan belt from Pakistan in the west to Burma in the East, says a new United Nations Development Fund documentary highlighting the danger of climate change to 1.3 billion people living in downstream valley.

"Some of these lakes pose danger to habitations as there is a risk of overflowing," said Andrew Schild, director of Nepal based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). About 15% of the lakes are said to be in the possible danger zone.

In 2005, Pareechu lake in China had burst in 2005 causing flash in the riverbed of Satluj in Himachal. At least 32 events of glacial lake overflows have been recorded in the Himalayan region causing huge lose to property and human life.

ICIMOD, a transnational body to monitor glaciers, says that lake Imja Toso in the Mount Everest region was non-existent in 1960s but now is one sq km in area and many lakes in eastern Himalayan region have increased by eight times over the past 40 years.

It is just tip of the iceberg as flow of water into glacial lakes is expected to increase further with half of the 32,000 glaciers expected to melt by end of this century. About 75% of glaciers in Indian part of Himalayan region are retreating at a faster than ever before, a recent Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) analysis said.

Ajay Chibber, under secretary in the United Nations said there are some successful solutions to fight danger of glacier lakes. One such solution highlighted in the documentary was of a glacial lake in Bhutan where manually drainage for excess water was created and boulders removed.

The melting glaciers posed a different kind of livelihood problem in Ladakh, where agriculture production had been on decline till Chhewang Norphel came out with a unique solution - creating artificial glaciers.

It was done by diverting water from streams to colder region to form ice during winter. During summer the water from these artificial glaciers was used to irrigate agriculture land. This won Norphel a UN award on Tuesday. "The cost of creating such a glacier is Rs three to 10 lakh and it can be built in one season," he said.

What everyone including rural development minister Jairam Ramesh agreed was that melting of Himalayan glaciers pose a livelihood challenge to people in the hills and on the eight major rivers such as Ganga and Indus that flow from Himalayas. "We all have to work together to find a solution," Ramesh said, in a sms message read at a conference on Tuesday.

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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