Climate and Us | India simply cannot ignore the climate cause in the Himalayas - Hindustan Times
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Climate and Us | India simply cannot ignore the climate cause in the Himalayas

ByJayashree Nandi
Feb 08, 2023 06:33 PM IST

For India to honestly invest in fighting the climate crisis through budgetary allocations and “green” development, the lapses in the Himalayas and surrounding vulnerable regions cannot be ignored.

It’s a big year for climate action in India. India has the G20 presidency where climate finance, energy transition and climate resilience will be on the agenda. India is expecting a strong deliverable in the G20 communique on climate finance from the developed world to developing countries.

The lapses in the Himalayas need a very careful and honest assessment immediately. PREMIUM
The lapses in the Himalayas need a very careful and honest assessment immediately.

Union Budget 2023

While delivering the Union Budget 2023, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned the word “green” about 23 times. The outlay is equally ambitious capturing the need to now see energy transition and jobs associated with it as an opportunity — and not a burden or obligation. The Budget provides 35,000 crore for priority capital investments towards net-zero transition and energy security, Sitharaman announced. The Budget provided an outlay of 19,700 crore for the National Green Hydrogen Mission, which is expected to facilitate the transition of the economy to low-carbon intensity and reduce the dependence on fossil fuel imports. All of this places climate action on the top of priority areas of work for the State.

While delivering the Union Budget 2023, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned the word “green” about 23 times. (ANI)
While delivering the Union Budget 2023, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned the word “green” about 23 times. (ANI)

The Joshimath tragedy

But this image of progression obscures the conflicts India is facing in ecologically fragile areas such as the Himalayas. For instance, Joshimath and several other parts of Uttarakhand are already on the edge. Locals are trying to come to terms with loss, displacement, and trauma. It's now quite certain that anthropogenic activity and mega infrastructure projects may have triggered a rapid pace of sliding in an already unstable geology.

In response to a question on the details of heavy construction works carried out and the extant parameters in Joshimath during the last three years, the details of violations of related parameters and action taken thereon in Rajya Sabha, science and technology minister, Jitendra Singh responded that environmental clearance is mandatory for major construction projects.

“Joshimath is located on a thick cover of very old landslide material. Large boulders of gneiss and fragments of basic schist rocks are observed to be embedded in a grey-coloured silty sandy matrix. The region has been witnessing gradual subsidence. This was also reported by a committee set up under Mahesh Chandra Mishra in 1976. The report suggested that heavy construction should be allowed only after examining the load-bearing capacity of the ground condition. Moreover, the geology of many locations in the Himalayan region is unstable and dynamic, and environment clearance is mandatory, before any major construction project is taken up,” he said in his response.

It's now quite certain that anthropogenic activity and mega infrastructure projects may have triggered a rapid pace of sliding in Joshimath's already unstable geology. (Reuters)
It's now quite certain that anthropogenic activity and mega infrastructure projects may have triggered a rapid pace of sliding in Joshimath's already unstable geology. (Reuters)

The Char Dham lapses

Interestingly, the 900-km-long Char Dham project in Uttarakhand — that connects the religious sites of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri — bypassed environmental scrutiny. This was because the project was divided into small parts to evade the need for an appraisal. The Union environment ministry in an affidavit to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2018 said that under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification 2006, only new national highways and expansion of highways longer than 100 km need prior environmental clearance. It also said the ministry informed the Tribunal that it had not received any clearance proposal by the name of Char Dham Yatra. The ministry was responding to a petition in NGT that said the Char Dham project did not undergo an EIA. The construction of the Char Dham road has been fraught with controversy with several landslides reported at a stretch.

I visited parts of these stretches in the aftermath of the February 2021 glacier disaster in Chamoli. The noise of stone crushers and earthmoving equipment marred the silence of the high Himalayas on the road from Rudraprayag to Joshimath at a height of over 1,000 metres, and then again, up from Joshimath, around 2,000 metres high.

The EIA loophole

The rubble, including huge boulders from blasted hill slopes, is gathered along the road, with some perilously close to the edge. Even those belonging to the 21-member majority panel of the Supreme Court’s high-powered committee who supported double-laning of the Char Dham road project, in their report, said that the slopes are unstable in many areas. Further, following the sudden resignation of Ravi Chopra, chairman of an expert panel set up by the Supreme Court to oversee the widening of roads under the Char Dham Pariyojana in February last year, Chopra shared his concerns about the vulnerability of Uttarakhand in an interview to HT. Chopra resigned after the Centre repeatedly ignored the recommendations of the panel, including his view that a road width of 12m to 14m with paved shoulders could make the region vulnerable to disasters in the higher reaches of the Himalayas.

“The vulnerability of the state along these highways has definitely increased. There are a dozen major stretches that have become perennial problems, which will now disrupt traffic, particularly during the monsoon. There has been a massive unforeseen loss of forests and trees due to unanticipated landslides. Loss of forests for local people is a loss of resources and leads to impoverishment,” Chopra said. On July 14 last year, the Union environment ministry notified amendments that exempt highways in border areas, power plants using biomass, enhancement in the fish handling capacity of ports, and expansion of airport terminals from obtaining prior environment clearances, changing the EIA policy put in place in 2006. This, by and large, ensured highways in the high Himalayas are exempted from EIA.

Construction meets climate crisis

To now say that environmental clearance is mandatory for major construction in the Himalayas seems farcical. The concerns raised on the impacts of hydroelectric projects near the paraglacial region also remain unaddressed. More than one scientific authority has spelt out that hydropower projects in the high Himalayas can make it extremely vulnerable to a variety of disasters.

Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has underlined the link between the February 7 glacier breach disaster in Uttarakhand’s Rishi Ganga River with infrastructure development — particularly the construction of hydropower projects in the higher reaches of the Himalayas in 2021. In its analysis of the disaster published on March 3 — Understanding the Chamoli flood: Cause, process, impacts, and context of rapid infrastructure development — cryosphere experts, hydrologists, and climate scientists concluded that the Hindu Kush Himalayas are a multi-hazard environment, and that hydropower projects, apart from amplifying disaster risk, impact environmental flows, water quality, and the health of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

The Char Dham Project bypassed environmental clearance because the project was divided in to small parts to evade the need for appraisal. (HT Photo)
The Char Dham Project bypassed environmental clearance because the project was divided in to small parts to evade the need for appraisal. (HT Photo)

On the other hand, these projects are also facing risks from climate crisis-related flow variations, extreme events, erosion and sedimentation, and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)/landslides dammed outburst floods (LDOFs).

The Centre must also address why the Tapovan Vishnugad project was allowed to restart restoration work in its tunnels with blasting, as locals have claimed. The damage done to the Himalayas through various projects may even be irreversible now. The vice-chancellor of the University of Hull and landslide expert, Dave Petley, in an interview to HT on January 30 said the environment of the Himalayas is being degraded at a high rate — the clearing of forests, the construction of poorly engineered roads, the blocking of rivers through dam construction are all significantly impacting it. Further, monsoon patterns are changing as a result of the climate crisis. It is possible to mitigate the impact of landslides through proper land use planning, management of water and well-designed engineering, he said.

The lapses in the Himalayas need a very careful and honest assessment immediately. Overall, the effort to dilute and fast-track environmental clearances to mega-infrastructure projects may prove counterproductive in ecologically vulnerable areas of the country, leaving scars that will not heal.

I was in Dharamkot for a short visit in January when locals during informal conversations referred more than once to the fact that the gods and goddesses in the Himalayas are unhappy. “Look at Uttarakhand. Even here it doesn’t snow the way it used to five years ago. Why? The gods are very unhappy,” said a local.

Perhaps, we need to understand and discuss what locals, particularly in the high Himalayas, feel about these disasters and what may be making the powers they believe in, unhappy, and find the right solutions before it's too late.

From the climate crisis to air pollution, from questions of the development-environment tradeoffs to India’s voice in international negotiations on the environment, HT’s Jayashree Nandi brings her deep domain knowledge in a weekly column

The views expressed are personal

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