ARTICLE | Uttarakhand Disaster
Economy is a subsystem of the biosphere, not the opposite!
O
n February 6, reports came in that the NITI Aayog, the government’s apex think tank, has commissioned a study aimed at examining the “unintended economic consequences” of decisions by the judiciary that have hindered and stalled bigticket infrastructure development projects on environmental grounds. The objective of such an exercise clearly seems to give a message to the judiciary and policy makers that development of infrastructure – roads, dams, ports, etc. – are essential for economic development and economic fallout of the environmental regulations must be considered while hindering or stalling them. The next day, on the February 7, in the morning hours, nature sounded a completely opposite view point. A massive crack in the glacier from the Nanda Devi Bio Reserve, almost 5,600 meters high in the Himalayas, caused landslides and flash flood that
34 February 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
roared down the Rishi Ganga river in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand to bring in huge devastation in this highly fragile ecosystem. People died, hydropower projects were completely washed away and immense human sufferings were caused. By the time I wrote this piece, it is reported that about 70 dead bodies have been recovered and about 170 people go missing. In fact, after a rigorous and long search operation, the authorities seem to be giving up. They are considering to issue death certificates for the missing persons. The cause of this particular disaster is still being assessed, but the overall impact of climate change on the glaciers of the Himalayas are already established. Such disasters are not new for the region. However, climate change is going to trigger them more often. Time to rethink our development approaches, both at the global and national levels.
Foretold, unheeded
Raini, the village of Chamoli district,
at 3,700 metres above mean sea level, has been one of the places where the iconic Chipko movement of the 1970s started. The floods of massive mud and rocks, that gushed down from the top of mountains due to the lake burst that happened under the weight of a suspected avalanche, was first noticed by this village perched on the upper slopes above Rishi Ganga. The glaciers in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve spread across an area of around 690 square kilometres and form the catchment of the Rishi Ganga River. A 2019 study by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) found out that Himalayan glaciers are melting at twice the rate they were two decades ago. The melting glaciers are creating larger lakes at their snouts. These snouts are also called the toe or end of the glaciers at any given point in time. These are often like ramps. At this point, the area tends to be unstable and may not be able to contain mass volume of water that might fall off the glacier.
