Desecration of environment has made Uttarakhand prone to floods, landslides

Killer landslides and floods that leave thousands of pilgrims stranded are now common in Uttarakhand during the monsoon. The desecration of the environment is to blame.

Updated on: Jul 29, 2014, 18:25:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan

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Since 2005, heavy monsoon floods have been causing havoc in Uttarakhand. This year, again, over 6,000 pilgrims were stranded forcing the government of the pristine north-western Himalayan state to suspend the Char Dham yatra.

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It is clear that tampering with the state’s fragile ecology has led to the devastation. The India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2013 shows how the new state’s eagerness to catch up with Himachal Pradesh, its better-off neighbour, in terms of development, has exposed it to nature’s fury.

Uttarakhand is the only state in the north-western Himalayas where the forest cover had declined. Between 2001 and 2013, the state lost about 500 sq kms of forest. During this period, the green cover increased in both Himachal Pradesh and in Jammu and Kashmir.

Much of the decline in Uttarakhand’s green cover has happened in Uttarkashi and Rudraparayag districts. This was the epicenter of the monsoon-induced flash floods last year and this year too.

PHOTOS:Rain fury returns to Uttarakhand

A closer reading of the report shows that even the quality of forest, which is essential to check the heavy flow of monsoon rains, has deteriorated. The tree density in the forests of Uttarakhand has dipped and the extent of very dense forest cover has also declined, the report states.

“A good forest retains a lot of water that comes during the monsoon, preventing devastation. As the forest quality goes down, its ability to retain water also reduces resulting in higher sand erosion,” said TS Shankar Raman, a biologist with Nature Conservation Foundation.

In addition to the loss in forest cover, the last decade also witnessed the development of a vast network of roads in the state’s ecologically sensitive interiors. Geological scientists, who should have played a key role in deciding the topography of the roads and should have advised on avoiding Uttarakhand’s highly active tectonic fault-lines, either neglected to do so or did and were ignored.

“Key attention needed to be paid that roads don’t block natural water ways intensifying the fury of flash floods. Most of the roads have been rebuilt on the old fault lines despite the caution,” said Professor KS Vaidya of Bangalore’s Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, adding that the heavy loss of life in the deluge was the result of “criminal oversight” of the state’s geological features and water channels by the authorities over the decades.

It’s clear that Uttarakhand has side-stepped science and bowed to local political demands for roads. The impact of this can be seen every monsoon. This has happened despite the National Disaster Management Authority advising the state to ensure that the view of geologists is incorporated in road construction plans. A debate is also raging about the destructive contribution of the large number of hydel projects built in the state.

After the 2013 tragedy, a study of river water flow in Uttarakhand was carried out. However, its key recommendations that sought to slow down haphazard development in the state did not find any takers. This was because it would have resulted in the scrapping or downsizing of some major hydel projects that have been blamed for disturbing natural river flow, a reason for the high intensity of flash floods.

A ministerial committee headed by former cabinet secretary BK Chaturvedi to examine the impact of hydel projects on the state’s ecology had recommended a minimum water flow of 30% (50% during winters). The National Hydro Power Corporation officials dismiss claims of the hydel projects causing devastation as propaganda by anti-dam activists. Even environment minister Prakash Javadekar seems to support the view.

“The June 2013 tragedy should have been a wake-up call on stopping unplanned bumper-to-bumper hydel projects. Sadly, it had failed to wake them (the political class) up,” said Himanshu Thakkar of the Delhi-based advocacy group, South Asian Network for Rivers Dams and People.

Sadly, many of the ecological concerns of Uttarakhand, which is the source of the river Ganga, also fail to find a mention in the National Democratic Alliance government’s new Clean Ganga Mission.

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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