Adapting To a Warming World

Context: The floods that hit Uttarakhand are a symptom of two critical ecological and developmental emergencies.

Ecological Emergency: due to 

• Environmental fragility: Make the region susceptible to earthquakes, landslides and flash floods.
• Overlapping of Indian tectonic plate and Eurasian tectonic plate. 
• Presence of fast-moving rivers with source in glaciers 
• Climate change: Heterogeneous glacier retreat (due to rise in temperature) is changing streamflow patterns, affecting the incidence of glacial-lake outburst floods.
• Exacerbating the risk of flooding and water shortages associated with future climate change.

Developmental Emergency: due to 

• Ignored environmental fragility: Constructing dams and roads have disrupted natural water flow and slope and encroached on areas exposed to rapid flash floods.

• Distortion of environment data: responsibility for quantitative and qualitative data on land and water rests largely with agencies that also have regulatory or planning responsibilities.

• E.g. The Survey of India, The Geological, Botanical and Zoological Surveys and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

• Focus on the cost of construction: The development paradigm is focussed more on the cost of construction and direct benefits rather than evaluating its impact on nature.

• E.g. the value of increased production for irrigation projects, the value of power supply in hydel projects, cost and time reduction for travel in road projects and so on.

• Management of water resources: infrastructure project (dams) alters and impacts all riparian states and thus ignores multiple uses of a river downstream. (may also impact precipitation)

• Governance challenges are increasing because of demographic, economic and ecological changes.

Way Forward: 

• Ensure objective, reliable and data on the environment 

• Strengthen sources of objective data and expand research on climate change impact in universities and research institutions.
• Using technology: utilise remote sensing capacities offered by the Space Commission.
• Ecosystem-based approach for evaluation: Road and urban construction in vulnerable areas, land-use projects in dryland areas need to look beyond construction cost.
• Manage multiple uses of water: Go beyond dispute interstate dispute redressal (under Article 262)
• Every river-based project should be designed and approved in the context of entire river basin.
• Ensure cooperative decision making based on a shared understanding of hydrology of the river.
• Supreme Court judgment in the Kaveri case has recognised waters of the inter-state river as a national asset and cannot be located in any one State.