Climate Change Isn’t the Only Problem

52

Bharat Lal Seth
International Rivers
April 15, 2015

Last year the Jhelum River Basin received unprecedented rainfall in the Kashmir Valley. It was the wettest September in recorded history; several weather stations broke their 24 and 48 hour records. The administrators in the region were swift to call the downpour and resulting deluge a “hydro-met tragedy”. Hydro-met is a contraction for the terms hydrological and meteorological, and therefore the loss of lives, infrastructure and property in this flood disaster was laid squarely on unpredictable precipitation patterns and a fast changing climate. Yet, although undeniably the Jhelum Valley received unparalleled September rains, the inconvenient fact remains that the disaster was notably exacerbated by human interventions in the river basin.

In a candid concession, Javed Jafar, chief engineer of the irrigation and flood control department, said that besides heavy rain and discharge, the urban and rural encroachments in the river basin – including infrastructure such as railway lines, expressway and other roads – played a negative role in creating bottlenecks, which exacerbated the floods to the tune of “15-20%”. What Jafar meanderingly acknowledged, but didn’t stress, is the need for better infrastructural planning in the floodplain instead of encroaching and building on the wetlands and lakes that are a natural sponge for floodwaters.

“Our master planning is skewed. Under the garb of tourism there is a cartel, which acts against the preservation of ecosystems. We need to do away with development without planning,” said Iftikhar A. Hakim, chief town planner of Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir that was badly hit by the September floods. “Srinagar, with a population of 1.4 million, is not only exposed to constant danger from floods, but is itself the cause of floods” he added, saying that unregulated urbanization worsened the impacts of the flood.

At a media workshop held April 6-8, organized by the Centre for Environment Education and The Third Pole, it was made clear by expert presentations and a visit to particular river catchments that urban and rural encroachments in the floodplain worsened the risks and impacts of flooding in the valley. “We didn’t fail in 2014; we failed much before it,” said Saleem Beg, a member of the National Monuments Authority. “We’re doing away with wetlands and water bodies essential for the health of the river system”, he said. The authority, among other things, is responsible for considering permissions for construction in prohibited and regulated areas.

The Jhelum, 725 kilometers in length, has the calmest descent among the Himalayan rivers in the Indus River Basin. In 150 km of the upper stretch the river descends a mere 24-meters, which makes the Jhelum a relatively silent river that is inclined to overflow its banks in the Kashmir valley. This characteristic makes the drainage basin wetland and system of lakes particularly vital to deal with floodwaters. Inspite of this, the spread of Wular Lake, one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia, and part of the Jhelum drainage basin, reduced from 159 sq km in 1911 to 86 sq km in 2007. Due to such happenings the carrying capacity of the river basin is reducing; the volume of flood discharge in September 2014 was three times the carrying capacity of the river.

Weather forecaster in hot seat

During the period 1901-2013, the average September rainfall in the region has been approximately 33 mm. Notably, six times the average was received last year. At last week’s workshop, Sonam Lotus, scientist with the Indian Meteorology Department, stationed in Kashmir for more than 9 years, talked us through the terrifying days of September 1 to 7. Very high rainfall was received on the 3rd night and 4th morning. Sonam, in the hot seat, gave a warning to the administrators on the 3rd afternoon that they would have a “window period” as they were “not expecting this much water”. Instead there was incessant downpour over the next 48 hours and beyond, with no window period in sight. The misinformation was labeled as “human limitation”, and Sonam claimed that with the technology at his disposal it wasn’t possible to predict such high “abnormal” rainfall with certainty. “Don’t wait for the disaster, prepare now,” says Sonam now, alluding to the fact that much can be done in terms of giving the river space as well as in disaster preparedness. He spoke of a conversation in May last year that he had with a water resources engineer who had a premonition that “the big flood was coming”.

“How good are we at spotting trends? The media is there when it happens, but what happens before?” questioned Joydeep Gupta of The Third Pole, co-organizer of the workshop, stressing the need for pre-disaster awareness and reporting.

Natural calamities are only further heightened when short-term real estate interests eschew the functions of a floodplain. The same was the case in Uttarakhand in 2013, when hydropower projects, rampant muck dumping and river bank encroachments worsened the impact of the raging flood waters.

Given the increasing occurrence of such intense and incessant week-long rainfall events, it is essential to put in place preventive measures that assist in delaying water flow in the catchment – not only to the main stem, but also the streams and tributaries, water bodies and lakes, which together increase the carrying capacity in the river basin. Our interventions on and around rivers need to be scrutinized not just in the postmortem of such tragedies, but re-engineered in to our nonexistent River Basin planning.