would do a great disservice to the victims of the colossal human tragedy unfolding in Uttarakhand if we describe it as a “natural” disaster — as do most politicians, bureaucrats, and many in the media. True, the disaster’s immediate causes were natural, if extreme, weather events: high rainfall following a cloudburst, and flash floods. But it couldn’t have acquired the terrifying dimensions it did, nor would the floodwaters have ferociously inundated vast areas for days, without a number of man-made factors at work.
Chief among these are the unprecedented amount of silt, stones and boulders contained in the floodwaters, the enormous quantities of eroded soil that were suddenly released, and the speed with which mountains slopes caved in and giant landslides occurred — as if they were only waiting to happen. Clearly, the context, background and deeper causes of the disaster lay in an already existing process of destabilisation of Uttarakhand’s ecosystem.
This is the end-result of extensive deforestation of mountain tracts, rampant sand mining along river-banks, haphazard construction of roads along crumbling ridges, a cancerous growth of tourism leading to the proliferation of ill-designed, ecologically unsound hotels, guest houses and restaurants, and above all, the building of hundreds of dams to generate electricity for export to other states.
All these speak to multiple policy and governance failures. Even the intensity of the initial cloudburst seems related to a man-made phenomenon — global warming. Cloudbursts occur when excessive moisture is trapped inside a warm cloud envelope and is suddenly condensed. The process is part of recent changes in the monsoon cycle and greater variation in daily rainfall. A National Atmospheric Research Laboratory study shows a 14.5 per cent decadal rise in the frequency of very heavy rain-events in India over half-a-century.
Besides, there is evidence that a GLOF (Glacial Lake Outburst Flood) deluged Kedarnath with water gushing from a higher altitude. GLOFs, or the bursting of lakes formed by melting glaciers, are a growing Himalayan phenomenon, also caused by man-made climate change.
However, it’s hydroelectric dams that are the greatest culprit here. Their contribution to the destabilisation of Uttarakhand’s ecosystem far exceeds that of any other factor. Dams involve drilling huge tunnels in the hills by blasting rocks, placing enormous turbines in the tunnels, cutting down forests to build water channels, roads, townships and other infrastructure, and laying transmission lines on slopes. They extract building materials from riverbeds, dump huge quantities of debris, and massively alter the hydrology and natural course of rivers.
Many dams are built on the same river cheek-by-jowl and leave no scope for the river’s regeneration. Rivers aren’t just water flows, but living ecosystems with fish, vegetation and plankton. They are crucial to people’s livelihoods. Serial construction, without leaving a five-km distance between two dams, is a recipe for killing rivers, the ecosystem and livelihoods. Yet, a stupefying 680 dams are reportedly in various stages of planning or construction in Uttarakhand, in addition to 70 existing ones, which have already gobbled up half the length of the state’s major rivers.
Such horrendously destructive dams have been promoted in Uttarakhand, says a Comptroller and Auditor General report, without “specific measures … to cope with the risk of flash floods. The adverse consequences … can cause loss of lives in low-lying downstream areas…”
This is exactly what happened. The remedy to such destruction lies in honestly addressing governance failures — and reviewing all existing, planned and proposed dams while halting their operation/construction.
