Trade spells trouble for Nathu La ecology

According to a Central Pollution Control Board , the growing human activity after the re-opening of the Nathu La pass for international trade has led to deterioration in the quality of the sensitive Himalayan soil, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 14, 2008, 24:49:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Call it a trade-off. The re-opening of the Nathu La pass for international trade may have fostered better trade ties between India and China. But growing human activity in the region has led to deterioration in the quality of the sensitive Himalayan soil, a Central Pollution Control Board study has found.

At 14,000 feet, Nathu La Pass is among the world’s highest trading points. It was opened for trade on July 6, 2006, 44 years after it was closed. Now, the Indian and Chinese governments have started work on expanding the trade route.

But this has resulted in environmental degradation in the region, says the study conducted in 2007. The environment watchdog found that the expansion of the route has resulted in the Tshangu Lake shrinking. Reason: the debris, generated from the widening of the road, are flowing into the river.

“The lake receives surface rain water from the slightly inclined mountain side where the extension work is in progress. There is no arrangement to check the surface water from carrying the debris from earth cutting,” the report said. The study was conducted after environmentalists and locals raised a hue and cry about the adverse impact of the work on the area’s fragile ecology.

The CPCB also notes that the road passes between the lake and the markets located on its banks and there is no drainage system in place to eject the waste from the markets and human settlements. Consequently, the lake functions as a dumping ground.

The CPCB team also visited a border trading point Sherathang Trade Mark run by Department of Commerce & Industries, Sikkim government and found solid waste dumped in huge piles. “The waste, including plastic waste, is burnt in an open area behind the trade house,” the report said.

A CPCB official said the findings have been forwarded for appropriate action to the Sikkim government.

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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