State of the Himalayas and Outlook
The
Himalayas are called the water towers of Asia, but are much more in reality.
·
The South-Asian
Monsoon, the lifeline of agriculture in the sub-continent, depends on
the Himalayas, including the trans-Himalayas.
·
Over a billion (100
crores) people depend largely on the rivers that emanate out of these mountain
ranges.
·
This - along with the
Tibetan Plateau, also called the Third Pole because of its enormous store of
ice - controls earth's heat gain to a significant extent.
·
The fertile
plains of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna system has been created by
the mineral rich soil-silt carried by many of these Himalayan-origin rivers.
Even the world's largest mangroves - Sundarbans, a UNESCO-listed world
heritage and far into the coastal plains, owes its origins partly to the
Himalayan rivers.
·
The forests that cover
large parts of both the high mountains (below the tree-line) and mid &
lower levels, also harbour a large variety of life-forms, holding a treasure
trove of biodiversity.
·
The Himalayas are the
only major mountain range still undergoing a build-up, and thus susceptible to very
high seismic activity (nearly 85% of all earthquakes in India occurs in the
Himalayan region), with consequences on the kind of "development"
that should be attempted here.
Being one of the
youngest mountain ranges and possibly the only major one in the world to be still
under the neo-tectonic process (a 'living-mountain'), there are several
fragilities as well. This massive mountains are geologically very
active, and are prone to numerous ruptures, up-thrusts etc. Thus
the fragility of the entire eco-system, and vulnerability of the
life-support systems are more than many other mature mountain eco-systems in
India or elsewhere. The people of the Himalayas had learned to live with
these natural limits, though often suffering from the same instabilities of a
fragile mountain eco-system – though with limited damages.
In the last century, the
Himalayas have come under increased number of multiple exploitations and
attacks.
·
On the one hand, it
has seen massive militarisation, being in the "political border
region" of several nation states. This high level of militarisation,
with its attendant constructions, heavy machine use, extensive and large-format
terra-forming, and the pressures of high volume human & goods transport for
the armed forces - has created enormous strain on some of the fragile
eco-system components.
·
The concurrent
large-scale urbanisation and mechanization of mountain societies have
increased these destabilizing pressures immensely.
·
The attendant
decrease of forest/ vegetative cover has compounded these problems -
leading to destabilization of numerous mountain slopes, and causing innumerable
land-slides and slips. This process was tremendously accelerated by the
British, through their large scale timber extraction from Himalayan
forests.
·
An increased
number of big and medium dams and reservoirs to feed the ever increasing power demand
of a GDP-growth oriented economy has also contributed to these loss of
a delicate balance of the mountain slopes.
·
Of late, a large number
of so-called run-of-the-river projects - while avoiding creating large
reservoirs, have blasted numerous huge tunnels through these unstable mountains,
thus loosening their integrity. The result is again more frequent
slides, falls and slips, along with draining out water sources for the villages
located on top of these.
·
The increased number of
large hydro-meteorological weather events, like unusually heavy rain-falls or
devastating floods have increased and are still increasing due to both local
(deforestation, slope cutting, heavy construction,....) and global (climate
change driven) ecological degradations are also taking a heavy toll on the
Himalayas.
No one can deny the
economic and reasonable life-style aspirations of the mountain societies,
but the enormous opportunities that the Himalayas offered by its very
uniqueness have been missed & misinterpreted, while pursuing these
economic dreams. The huge benefits of its eco-system services to a
large population of south-Asia, have just been seen as an input to industrial
and economic growth opportunity, rather than a life-enhancing contribution. The
values and indicators of a high-consumption and disruptive urban society have
been mindlessly super-imposed on a vastly different geo-ecology. The Himalayas has been used by the far-off
urban consumer societies as an inexhaustible store of basic inputs for the
production of their consumer goods, and the result has been devastating.
This has resulted in
skewed demographic conditions in many of the rural areas. A large migration of
the young, male members in search of jobs and income has left many of the
villages with old-women-children as dominant resident populations, leading to
new but unstable societies. Simultaneously, many village areas being
deserted, with plains / other migrants - attracted by the job opportunities in large
construction activities and seasonal jobs in orchards - settling in these
near empty areas. Social tensions are rising in a hitherto peaceful and
accommodative society.
The other fast paced
change visible in the last couple of decades is the rapid inroads that
the large-scale market forces have done in to a largely regional-dependency
oriented low-consumption society. The pattern of food and necessity
growing mountain farming has changed fast, to very high dependence on cash
crops. This in itself is not the sole or root cause of the problems that
mountain agriculture faces – having given a much needed economic leeway, but
the attendant commercialization of inputs, processes and commodification of
food, has led to economic bondage.
The Himalayas were
always a destination for non-mountain people, but here too, the rapid
commercialization/ commodification of 'natural beauty' and ‘religiosity’ have
distorted the pattern. People no longer are willing to bear the
restraints that this special destination is inherently integrated with.
The desire to enjoy the 'special', without the tolerance to experience
the difficulties and limits that creates this special attraction, has created environment
destroying mass market tourism, with short term economic benefits but long term
erosion of life-support systems.
Today, a fairly significant
part of the snow & ice cover of the Himalayas has disappeared - a
result of both local actions like deforestation and urbanization, and also due
to the global warming caused by capitalist societies’ humongous
emissions of greenhouse gases over the last century and more.
The depleting
vegetative cover is changing the capacity of the mountains to hold water -
leading to large and unstable variations in river flows, as well as to hold
their own weight while subjected to heavy rainfalls, leading to
myriads of life and livelihood-threatening massive land-slides.
The increasing demands
of plains-modelled heavy transportation has led to the reckless clear-cutting
of the steep slopes throughout the mountains, destabilising large
areas of these where human habitations and their farms were created over the
last few centuries.
All these have now been
forced into facing an even more acute challenge, due to increasingly
extreme climatic events driven by the GHG-led climate change. Extreme
climate events are increasing and their combination with fragile
eco-systems is proving deadly for the human and other life here. The
deadly extreme rainfall and flooding of June 2013 was neither the first, nor
will be the last, only the most damaging out of a long chain of increasing disasters.
This should have served as a final wake-up call for all concerned,
including the governments of the Himalayan states. Instead, they are
asking and planning for more of the same drivers of this increasing
devastation. In many places, large-scale polluting industries like cement
factories, chemical industries etc. are coming up in the name of job creation,
without checking the carrying capacity of these enclosed eco-systems.
-------------------
It is time that we wake
up, before it is too late to save this world ecological, cultural and
'spiritual' heritage. Himalayan people themselves need to take the control of
the direction their development takes. The consequences of the present
trend are clear, but the contours of a sustainable and mountain-specific
development process – though being discussed - is still not worked out in great
detail.
A few of the critical questions that we need to ask,
debate over and find some answers to --
1. What are the extents of damage of various
sub-components of the Himalayan eco-systems ? The snow-ice
systems are somewhat (though sketchily) known, but need better assessments.
The river systems need to be considered as a whole, rather than
"impact assessments" river by river, in isolation. The forest
and grass-land systems are being strongly impacted, and need extensive studies.
2. What are the economic and social drivers of
the present pattern of destructive mega-construction mania, and how these
can be replaced with mountain-specific economic activities ?
3. How do we assess the true extent of damage by the extensive
militarisation of the Himalayas, and what would be the processes to start
making this a prominent agenda in all of our discourses on the Himalayas ?
4. How the genuine energy needs and demands of
the mountain people be met without damaging the very sustenance of
these ecosystems - the rivers and forests ?
5. How the dominant discourse of consumption
and life-style oriented 'development' be challenged and transformed
into a satisfaction and quality of life oriented discourse ?
6. How the over dependence of ceaseless
inflows of consumer goods and equally incessant outflow of cash-generating
produce be transformed to more regional/ local exchanges that are also far
less prone to disruptions ?
7. What would be a holistic model of
mountain-suitable transportation system, with local-condition specific
modes, which will also be less vulnerable ?
8. How the fast reducing production of food in
the mountains be arrested, with an equally needed up gradation of the
quality of farming as a viable alternative livelihood.
9. How the special qualities of the Himalayas
be used for creating life-enhancing wealth for mountain people,
without creating the havoc of transient mass tourism or its concomitant damages
? How the "unique destination" qualities be used to
generate resources for the people, without yielding to crash
commercialization, leading to devaluation of the same uniqueness ?
10. How can a critical mass of popular demand
on these be created / encouraged, in a wide section ofthe Himalayan areas ?
What will be the political processes and social engagement strategies for
this ?
11. What are the mechanisms and processes to
engage and transform the existing institutional, state, commercial and
cultural processes that exist in/ around the Himalayas ?
Several more critical
questions need to be raised / debated and some broad consensus arrived at
over a reasonable period of engagements, involving all those committed to
this.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Soumya Dutta, Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha - BJVJ/Beyond Copenhagen Collective (BCPH) /India Climate Justice (ICJ);
Soumya Dutta, Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha - BJVJ/Beyond Copenhagen Collective (BCPH) /India Climate Justice (ICJ);
can be contacted at -
soumyadutta.delhi@gmail.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
circulated in the Himalaya Day program on 14th Sept
2015
No comments:
Post a Comment