Sunita Narain’s column – Recent disasters are not only natural but also man-made | Sunita Narain’s column: Recent disasters are not only natural but also man-made

Sunita Narayan Environmentalist

Recently, more than 300 people died due to the tragic landslide in Wayanad, Kerala. It may or may not have been related to climate change. Before that, the incidents of landslides and floods in Kedarnath or Himachal Pradesh were also related to climate change, or may not have been.

We know that climate change will lead to more extreme weather events in the future. We have seen record-breaking temperatures in many areas across the country. Then came the rainy season. There is also a clear science of extreme rainfall and its connection to climate change.

As ocean temperatures rise, the world will see more rain, and that will be in the form of heavy rainfall. So, even the days with fewer rains will see more rain. India is estimated to receive rainfall for a few hundred hours out of the approximately 8700 hours in a year. But in July 2024, the number of events classified as ‘very heavy rainfall’ according to the Indian Metrology Department (IMD) has more than doubled in the last five years.

Such incidents in July were 90 in 2020, which has increased to 193 in 2024. Take the data of Bareilly in UP. On July 8, this district received 460 mm of rain in 24 hours. Bareilly receives an average rainfall of 1100 to 1200 mm every year. So half of this rainfall occurred in just 24 hours.

The situation was the same in Champawat district of Uttarakhand. On July 8 itself, 430 mm of rain fell in 24 hours. If you take Pune district on July 25, then 560 mm of rain fell in 24 hours. This is more than half of the rainfall this district receives in a year.

Take the Himalayas. It is the youngest mountain range in the world. It is prone to landslides and cloudbursts and is also a highly seismic zone. It is fragile. Yet we build in the Himalayas as if we were building parking lots in a congested area of ​​Delhi.

We have no master plan for the towns in the Himalayan valleys. We are building on flood plains. In fact, we have started building even on rivers. We are destroying mountains. And we are cutting trees as if we will not get a chance tomorrow. It is true that we should develop the Himalayan region, but there is no justification for development projects without thinking. The hydroelectric projects being run in the Himalayas are an example of this.

We should not be against these projects. After all, hydropower is an important energy source. It is also a renewable and clean energy source. The question is how should we work on these projects keeping in mind the sensitivity of the Himalayas?

In 2013, I was a member of a high-level committee set up to examine these projects. The engineers said they proposed to build 70 hydroelectric projects on the Ganga to generate 9,000 megawatts of power.

According to this plan, 80 per cent of the mighty Ganga river would be ‘modified’ and the river would have less than 10 per cent of its water during lean periods. Then it would be nothing more than a drain. How can this be called development, I asked?

I suggested the alternative that we should redesign the projects according to the flow of the river, so that when there is more water in the river, more power is generated and when there is less water, less power is generated.

This meant that the projects should be designed in such a way that the river maintains 30 to 50 per cent flow at all times. Then you would be modifying the projects, not the river.

The Western Ghats of Kerala – where the landslide occurred – is part of the ecologically sensitive area recommended by the K. Kasturirangan Committee in 2013. The committee had recommended that activities like mining and excavation should be banned in these areas. But the Kerala government did not accept it and as a result, some hills collapsed due to excessive rain and there was massive loss of life and property. So remember, all the natural disasters we are seeing across the country today are not only natural but also man-made.

We are building on flood plains. We have started building on rivers as well. We are destroying mountains. We are cutting trees as if we will not get another chance to do so tomorrow. Whereas the Himalayas and Western Ghats are extremely sensitive areas.

(These are the author’s personal views.)