In this episode of Ekalavya Chaudhuri's blog...
The Nanda Devi story
On February 7, 2021, a slice of the Nanda Devi glacier snapped off in India’s northern state Uttarakhand. As I sit here in Kolkata in West Bengal, quite a lot of distance away to the east, the ramifications have spread. The digi-waves have been alive with a lot of questioning about how exactly this disaster came to occur and what, if at all anything, can be done in order to ensure that such a disaster does not take place in the future.
It is not in dispute that over the past few forty years, the Himalayan glaciers have begun to decay, whereupon their structural integrity goes for a toss, leading to a sustained increase in the prevalence of those hazards of the mountains, avalanches and landslides. A glacier is not beholden to policy or politics. It does not listen to these. Its demise is but a symptom of the overall transforming environmental situation. Glaciers die and disintegrate as coral reefs bleach, or fertile banks desertify or salinise.
Global warming, the most significant harbinger of climate change, is the force that is acting to have these seriously shocking shifts on the ice caps as well as the permafrost of the globe. As the years pass, the effects that are happening are becoming more clearly violent in their scope.
So what exactly went wrong?
It is not in dispute that over the past few forty years, the Himalayan glaciers have begun to decay, whereupon their structural integrity goes for a toss, leading to a sustained increase in the prevalence of those hazards of the mountains, avalanches and landslides. A glacier is not beholden to policy or politics. It does not listen to these. Its demise is but a symptom of the overall transforming environmental situation. Glaciers die and disintegrate as coral reefs bleach, or fertile banks desertify or salinise.
Global warming, the most significant harbinger of climate change, is the force that is acting to have these seriously shocking shifts on the ice caps as well as the permafrost of the globe. As the years pass, the effects that are happening are becoming more clearly violent in their scope.
So what exactly went wrong?
Glaciers in the Himalayas have always been majestic. Now they're about to turn deadly.
The Issues
What then, getting right down to the brass tacks of it, are the specific issues that haunt the region of the Himalayas now that could have had an impact on this disaster?
The disaster could have been either sparked off outright by what is known as a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood or GLOF, or a rock avalanche could have worked in tandem with such an event. Such a phenomenon is when a glacial lake bursts, an event that is not at all out of the ordinary in the Himalayas.
The glaciers that criss-cross Nanda Devi, India’s second highest peak, close to where the Rishi Ganga Hydroelectric Project has been built, have seen changing conditions over the past few years.
From the months of 2016 to 2019, the region received gradual increases in the surface area of cover, with a decidedly significant increase in the period leading up to February 2020.
By the middle of the summer of 2020, all of the seasonal cover melted, and left behind only endless snow and glacial ice. Now a portion of this cover would have returned to the normal water cycle, but the staggering seasonal coverage over the period would indicate that a disproportionate amount of the water would also have found itself in the crevasses of the Nanda Devi glaciers.
A part of the natural process of a glacier’s retreat leads to the formation of glacial ponds. These are bodies of water that form on top of, or within, a glacier. As these ponds progressively grow in volume (and some are known to store quite millions of cubic litres of water), so correspondingly does the pressure that they exert on the encircling walls surrounding them.
When that pressure reaches a breaking point, even a minor landslide or shift in the ice is enough to send simply millions and millions of tonnes of water and debris freewheeling down the slope.
Let's be real. This phenomenon cannot be STOPPED, any longer. The processes going into it have been lined up and we must look at ways to mitigate.
It is imperative, it is a must, that collective petitions are made to the government of India to organise agencies to monitor and map through satellite imagery what kinds of sites lie downslope every time a hydroelectric project is built in such regions.
Again, back in 2019, an individual named Kundan Singh had filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Uttarakhand High Court on the behalf of the Scheduled Tribe villagers of Reni village, stating that the construction of the Rishi Ganga Hydel Project as it was being constructed, could cause significant damage to them. The petitioner had alleged that the construction activity on the project flouted every regulation and norm laid down by the government for stone crushing activity in that area. Additionally, the disposal of the rock and rubble was being done by throwing it away into the river, causing potential for the pileup of mini blockages which could exacerbate something like…something exactly like what happened on February 7. It is imperative that there are agencies set up to monitor, regulate and manage these activities every time a hydro electric project is constructed, too.
It is only if these measures are taken that we can truly have an ecologically as well as an economically sustainable future. If that is not the case, we are heading for very deep waters indeed, and the swim ahead of us is not going to be one we emerge alive from.
The disaster could have been either sparked off outright by what is known as a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood or GLOF, or a rock avalanche could have worked in tandem with such an event. Such a phenomenon is when a glacial lake bursts, an event that is not at all out of the ordinary in the Himalayas.
The glaciers that criss-cross Nanda Devi, India’s second highest peak, close to where the Rishi Ganga Hydroelectric Project has been built, have seen changing conditions over the past few years.
From the months of 2016 to 2019, the region received gradual increases in the surface area of cover, with a decidedly significant increase in the period leading up to February 2020.
By the middle of the summer of 2020, all of the seasonal cover melted, and left behind only endless snow and glacial ice. Now a portion of this cover would have returned to the normal water cycle, but the staggering seasonal coverage over the period would indicate that a disproportionate amount of the water would also have found itself in the crevasses of the Nanda Devi glaciers.
A part of the natural process of a glacier’s retreat leads to the formation of glacial ponds. These are bodies of water that form on top of, or within, a glacier. As these ponds progressively grow in volume (and some are known to store quite millions of cubic litres of water), so correspondingly does the pressure that they exert on the encircling walls surrounding them.
When that pressure reaches a breaking point, even a minor landslide or shift in the ice is enough to send simply millions and millions of tonnes of water and debris freewheeling down the slope.
Let's be real. This phenomenon cannot be STOPPED, any longer. The processes going into it have been lined up and we must look at ways to mitigate.
It is imperative, it is a must, that collective petitions are made to the government of India to organise agencies to monitor and map through satellite imagery what kinds of sites lie downslope every time a hydroelectric project is built in such regions.
Again, back in 2019, an individual named Kundan Singh had filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Uttarakhand High Court on the behalf of the Scheduled Tribe villagers of Reni village, stating that the construction of the Rishi Ganga Hydel Project as it was being constructed, could cause significant damage to them. The petitioner had alleged that the construction activity on the project flouted every regulation and norm laid down by the government for stone crushing activity in that area. Additionally, the disposal of the rock and rubble was being done by throwing it away into the river, causing potential for the pileup of mini blockages which could exacerbate something like…something exactly like what happened on February 7. It is imperative that there are agencies set up to monitor, regulate and manage these activities every time a hydro electric project is constructed, too.
It is only if these measures are taken that we can truly have an ecologically as well as an economically sustainable future. If that is not the case, we are heading for very deep waters indeed, and the swim ahead of us is not going to be one we emerge alive from.