IUCN: Big improvement in India’s disaster preparedness, response

New Delhi: While India’s disaster preparedness and response has improved significantly, the fragility of the Himalayas and the increase in population and infrastructure are at the root of crises like the Joshimath incident, senior officials at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said.

Authorities in Uttarakhand have declared Joshimath in Chamoli district a landslide and subsidence-hit zone. Wide cracks have appeared on residential and commercial buildings and roads and fields in the town renowned as a hiking and pilgrimage destination. A number of structures have been declared unsafe and residents shifted to safer places.

“Whether it is flash floods, cloud bursts or incidents like Joshimath, it is because of a combination of issues. The increase in human population and infrastructure to cater to tourists and the fragility of the Himalayas are at the root (of it),” Yash Veer Bhatnagar, country representative of IUCN India, said.“As conservationists, we do not want to stop development everywhere. We want to make it as sustainable as possible, knowing well that remote villages in the Himalayas need basic amenities,” he asserted.

Satellite images released by the Indian Space Research Organisation showed the Himalayan town sank 5.4 cm in just 12 days following a possible subsidence event on January 2.

Although Joshimath is built on a fragile mountain slope in a region prone to landslides, its sinking is being attributed to large-scale development projects being undertaken there.

IUCN India and the TCS Foundation have launched an initiative, “Himalaya for the Future”, which aims to enhance sustainability and the well-being of the people in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) and downstream communities. It involves reviewing existing initiatives, research and literature, mapping and consulting with stakeholders, building scenarios to identify possible interventions and developing a tool for quantitative and qualitative modelling.

India has launched “Operation Dost” to extend assistance to Turkiye and Syria, which were hit by a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake and strong aftershocks on February 6. Asked if the exposure to disasters and crises in the IHR is going to increase with the expansion of the tourism sector, agriculture and hydro-electric projects, Bhatnagar said, “The extreme weather events are certainly going to increase.”

He said climate change is leading to changes in the frequency, intensity and distribution of rainfall in India. The amount and timing of rainfall have become more variable.

“A lot of cloudbursts are occurring in the Himalayas in September and October when the monsoon has normally receded and one doesn’t expect this to happen,” Bhatnagar said.

He also stressed on the need to conduct “very strong” awareness drives in areas closer to glacial lakes to minimise harm at the time of disasters such as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF).