Himalayas heading towards a point beyond redemption

Col KS Dhami (Retd)

Mountaineer & Parachute Regiment veteran

RARELY has nature hit back with such devastating power as it has done in recent months in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim, exposing the failure of the Central and state governments and aided organisations. The serious threat from heavy rain, cloudbursts, bursting of glacial lakes and water run-off due to deforestation has been ignored. People, too, are to blame for encroaching upon floodplains of rivers and lakes and raising buildings in low-lying areas.

All, however, is not lost due to the melting of glaciers — yearly rain and snow in the catchments areas will keep the rivers flowing. The danger is from glacial lake bursts, cloudbursts and the run-off due to reckless degradation of Himalayan forests and pastures — the storehouse of water — which for ages have kept the rivers flowing even when there is no rain. The source of the Indus, the Himalayas’ oldest river, is not a glacier but moss-covered earth named ‘Senge Khabab’ (lion’s mouth) by the Tibetans.

In the entire Himalayas, Bhutan stands out as the country where forests are being preserved and potentially dangerous glacial lakes identified for taking protective and preventive measures.

Across the Himalayas, glaciers are not just retreating but also shrinking and cracking. Despite its limited resources, Nepal has also been proactive. A decade ago, Nepal had a network of 49 weather monitoring stations at selected locations. More have come up to collect ground-based data on glaciers/glacial lakes. Bhutan has set up a highly motivated, trained labour force for inaccessible places to empty glacial lakes through controlled bursting and help preserve some for their scenic beauty through stabilising works.

Precipitation in the Himalayas is in the form of rain and snow. With global warming, the snowline has gone higher. At some altitudes, where once it snowed, it rains now — nothing melts snow and ice more than rain. Trans-Himalayan regions, which were considered to be in the ‘rain shadow’, now have been infiltrated by monsoon rain. The combined effect of rain at higher heights, the rise in the ablation limit due to increase in temperatures and reduction of the accumulation zones is a major cause of fast-retreating/disappearing glaciers, ice caps and snow beds/shelves.

To get a true and broad view of the state of the Himalayan snow cover, glaciers and glacial lakes, there is a need for high-resolution remote-sensing satellite system, drones, ground-based monitoring stations and most importantly, ground observations.

Bhutan, which is highly prone to the formation of glacial lakes, has taken steps since 1994, when a glacier lake burst caused a heavy loss of life and massive damage to villages, roads, bridges and power projects. In 1998, Bhutan, with its labour force armed with digging tools, reduced the water level of the high-altitude Raphstreng Tso glacial lake when it had reached the danger mark.

The surveillance and warning systems in Bhutan and Nepal consist of electronic sensors, transmitters, sirens and personnel deployed with wireless sets and satellite phones. A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) can result in catastrophic consequences if timely steps are not taken, as witnessed across the Indian Himalayas this year.

A practical warning system, without modern gadgets, saved a town over 300 years ago. On November 10, 1762, an earthquake caused a shoulder of a mountain to fall into the Sutlej upstream of Seoni (Himachal Pradesh), where the river flows through a narrow gorge. The dammed water rose to 400ft above the normal flow level and when it burst, a huge wave washed away the lower half of Bilaspur town. However, due to an efficient warning system based on firing matchlocks and beating drums, no lives were lost (sound travels far in the silence of the mountains).

In the Indian Himalayas, arguably the most destructive incident has been the bursting of a glacial lake on the Sutlej in Tibet. On the intervening night of July 31 and August 1, 2000, a massive wall of water — a Himalayan tsunami — 40-70ft high at the highest flow level, thundered along the Sutlej river from Tibet across the Great Himalayas. Overnight, it washed away roads, bridges, habitations and commercial establishments and threatened the Nathpa Jhakri Hydel Project.

The bursting of the Parechu lake formed on the Parechu river on the Chinese side of the border in Spiti in June 2005 is another example of the devastation GLOF can cause in the absence of reliable surveillance and warning systems and disaster management.

Lack of accurate data on water flows in the Himalayas in all seasons is a major cause of failure in terms of disaster management. It is equally important in the Indo-Gangetic plain, where too reliable data is missing. For years, plans to interlink rivers at the national level have been discussed at the highest levels, but with no positive outcome.

In February 2012, based on water flow data and project details provided by the chairman of the Standing Committee on Water Resources, the Supreme Court directed the Union of India to “forthwith constitute a committee for the interlinking of rivers”. Fully aware of the non-feasibility of this project, I wrote to the CJI and other members of the Bench: “Inter-linking rivers at the national level with channels cutting across the grain of the country and the natural flow of water, that too against the muddied monsoon sea of water, will not only be an ecological disaster but a financial quagmire.”

Rethinking took place and on April 1, 2012, the chairman described the data on river flows as ‘half-baked’ and asked the Water Resources Ministry to provide complete data on major river flows. Eleven years on, we still have no accurate data. Its lack has been a major cause of the recent calamities in the Indian Himalayas. Basically, unlike Bhutan, there is no spirit or motivation to perform. There is no accountability nor anyone to ensure it as the chair-borne advisers are too afraid to go out in the field.

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