ET Deep Dive: When Development Turns Disaster

0:00Hello and welcome to ET Deep Dive. It is best reported stories on audio. Today's episode is based on a report by Alangith K. Johnny who looks at what the recent flood in Nepal and catastrophes across Nepal and India tell us about a dangerous collision, a rapidly changing climate and development that hasn't changed fast enough with it. It's Sunday 6th September, I'm Anirban Chaudhary, this is the Morning Brief. Over the last few years, Nepal's weather has become increasingly unfamiliar to those who live there.

1:08The Himalayan nation has experienced weather events that were once unheard of, including the first tornado in the country's plains a few years ago. It's not merely that extreme events are becoming more frequent, but that they are becoming harder to anticipate. Each new disaster seems to bring something Nepal has not dealt with before. The latest, a glacial collapse triggered flash floods across the Nepal Tibet border. It killed more than 1200 people and left thousands missing. The problem is not confined to Nepal of course. Chamoli district in Uttarakhand experienced a similar disaster when a glacier and bedrock collapse triggered a flood in 2021. Just this year, flash floods and landslides struck across India from Assam and Uttarakhand to Kerala.

2:11Between 2019 and 2023, India recorded only 2000 such events. The international crisis for integrated mountain development says that studies point to an increase in reported flash flood events since the 1990s. Basically, the hazards are exacerbating faster than anyone can anticipate. While climate change is a major catalyst, the disasters unfolding across the region are also influenced by indiscriminate development in fragile mountain landscapes. For years, the debate has been framed as a choice between development and conservation. It's a false binary and the human cost of it is now becoming harder to ignore. Glacier related floods are a particularly worrying sign of how quickly the risks are changing.

3:14Such events are occurring at shorter intervals across the Himalayan region. In August, an ice patch weighing about 69 million kilos collapsed from the Shrikant the Glacier in Uttarakhand's Garwal Himalaya according to a study published in Natural Hazards. The glacier sits at an altitude of about 5,220 meters. The Chamoli disaster was another grim warning when a large chunk of a Himalayan glacier collapsed in the district, sending debris and water downstream, killing about 200 people. Scientists later estimated the force of the collapse to be equivalent to roughly 15 atomic bombs. The changing nature of the floods is only one part of the problem. The other is what has been built around rivers. Often floodplain guidelines are not fully followed in heliteranes.

4:18There's Kapil Gupta, an IIT Bombay professor who specializes in urban flood forecasting and mitigation. Local pressure, he says, often pushes construction closer to rivers. For example, hotels are constructed on river banks to give you a river view. India has guidelines to keep such construction away from flood prone areas. The Central Water Commission guidelines propose a default 100 meter restriction from the edge of a river until a state completes the scientific identification and demarcation of its flood plains. The broader policy problem has been acknowledged by Nithi Ayogh, which is noted that human activity can substantially increase the severity of floods and has called for strict implementation of floodplain zoning. Whether this is happening on the ground is the big question. Share Mohamed, a scientist at ICIMOD, points out,

5:20in the Himalayas, we increasingly have to consider extreme rainfall together with glacier change, glacier lakes, unstable slopes, landslides and large sediment loads. At the same time, expansion of settlements, roads and hydropower infrastructure is increasing exposure in some already vulnerable valleys. Many parts of the Himalayan region fall in highly vulnerable seismic zones. There, construction has expanded rapidly. Wet lands and flood plains are being lost. Forests are being cleared. Slopes are being cut for roads and other infrastructure. Construction can alter drainage and destabilize terrain. When extreme rainfall or a glacial event follows, the damage can be amplified by what is already on the ground. The Chardham Road project in Uttarakhand was launched in 2016 to widen and upgrade about 889 km of highways to two lane roads with

6:25paved shoulders while adding tunnels, bypasses and other structures. In 2017, the Kargil Zanskar Road was declared National Highway 301 opening a new phase of highway development in the Trans Himalayan region. Highway projects in Uttarakhand have continued to expand with the government announcing and inaugurating multiple projects in 2024, including widening stretches in Rudra Prayag and Chamoli. Better roads have opened remote parts of the Himalayas to tourists and pilgrims. Some of these destinations have become popular through social media. The increase in access has also brought more pressure on natural resources in high altitude areas. Roads, hotels and other infrastructure are bringing more people into areas exposed to floods and landslides. The development can make communities more connected and economies more dependent on tourism.

7:29It can also increase the number of people and assets that a sudden disaster can put risk. But simply, while development doesn't necessarily cause the disaster, it can dramatically increase what the disaster destroys. In the south, in Kerala, major floods and landslides have continued to cause losses in life and livelihood. It is not as if the warning wasn't loud. Around a decade and half ago, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert panel headed by Ecologist Madhav Gardgill, and examined the ecological pressures building across the region, including from infrastructure, tourism, mining and other development. It recommended treating the region at an ecologically sensitive area and dividing it into zones according to ecological sensitivity. However, the report was rejected by state governments. Remember that besides Kerala, the Western Ghats cut right through Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Kanataka and Tamil Nadu.

8:34Critics have pointed to the rise of such events in the region, including the 2018 Kerala floods, the 2024 Wienhard landslides and the 2024 Ankola-Shirur landslides in Kanataka as a consequence of the report's dismissal. The report's broader message was that development could not be separated from the ecological limits of the landscape. Professor Kapil Gupta, whom we cited earlier, says, when we talk about the Kerala incident, there is a lot of discussion on the destruction of Western Ghats. He adds, when you're widening the roads, you're digging slopes, same thing with tunnels and railways. This is a major reason why slopes are becoming unstable. As ICI-MOD scientist Shair Mohamed says, the objective should not be to stop development but to make development risk-informed. Broads, hydropower projects and settlements in high hazard valleys need to consider how the Himalayan

9:36environment is changing in a warming climate. The question of course is how quickly can one react? A few decades back, floods used to be very balanced. It had a fixed timeline. Communities used to be better prepared, says Avinash Kumar Chanchal, deputy program director Greenpeace South Asia. He adds, that knowledge and those adaptive measures are no longer helping them. The center approved the National Glacial Lake Outburst Flood Risk Mitigation Project on July 25th, 2024, for Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Uttarakhand. It had a financial outlay of 150 crore rupees. The Central Water Commission also monitors glacial lakes across the Himalayan river basins using remote sensing techniques. But is that enough for these new challenges? In a conventional flood, water levels rise gradually. Monitoring stations can detect the change

10:38and send an alert before the water reaches communities. The recent Nepal event was different. The size of the ice mass was so enormous that by the time it hit the ground, it released a huge amount of energy. Sunil Acharya, a Kathmandu-based climate specialist, says, this time the size of the ice mass was so enormous that by the time it hit the ground, it released a huge amount of energy. So even before the stations could send triggers, the floor moved much quicker. Some of the monitoring systems were washed away. That raises a question beyond alerts. Where do people go when it arrives? Professor Gupta says, people talk a lot about early warning systems. Even if you have early warning measures, if you don't know the safest place to shift a person during a catastrophe event, it's going to become harder. The question, he says, is what comes after the warning?

11:39Where is that safe place? How many people can be saved? Now the Himalayas span across Nepal, India, China, Tibet, Bhutan and Pakistan. So do many of the river systems that carry water from the mountains into communities downstream. A disaster in one country can quickly affect another. Acharya, whom we just cited, says the region needs stronger cooperation on early warnings in monitoring. Existing arrangements between countries are not enough, he adds. What is missing are joint monitoring, timely sharing of information and coordinated assessment of hazards before they occur. Muhammad of ICI-MOD says that while several bilateral mechanisms already exist, there is no comprehensive Himalayan framework covering cascading mountain hazards and development across the region. The mechanisms exist, but there is considerable scope to connect them most strongly with glacier monitoring, glacial lake outburst flood and landslide risk,

12:43satellite observations, early warning and planning of infrastructure in sensitive mountain areas. For Nepal, which is fewer resources to monitor these rapidly changing hazards, that cooperation is particularly important. The climate specialist Acharya says the country needs stronger monitoring systems and greater international support. He adds that disasters linked to global climate change should not leave countries such as Nepal carrying the cost alone. USAID cuts put in place by President Donald Trump and erstwhile US government accountability Zahar Elon Musk may also have had some impact on Nepal's early warning systems. The recent flood has shown the limits of systems already in place. Communities may have had a short window to respond to the event. Chanchal of Greenpeace says, basically the early prediction went wrong.

13:44The Himalayan region needs a coordinated approach to early warning systems. That would be the bare minimum of what vulnerable communities deserve. That's it for today. You are listening to the latest ETD dive reported by Alan Jeeeth, K. Johnny, narrated for audio by me, Anir Banchadri, sound designed by Amrit Rajee. Keep following our podcasts on your favorite platforms.