It146;s dark in the Himalayas

Recently an India-China meeting of water resources officials concluded with the usual: promises to share time series data on river flows in the Himalayas.

Recently an India-China meeting of water resources officials concluded with the usual: promises to share time series data on river flows in the Himalayas. While they grapple with this simple transaction, the problem has magnified in the last few years. Because of lack of reliable data on the Himalayan region, the chances of knowing the impact of climate change on these areas is remote. As a result, the planning for projects downstream continues on faulty premises and outdated data. It pretends that climate change does not exist.

At a recent seminar in the capital on the Rivers of Great Himalayas organised by the South Asia Chair of the Global Water Partnership, one of the presentations made by a World Bank expert put forward a slide that had plotted stations that record hydrological data. While the plains lit up with dots almost overlapping, there was darkness in the Himalayan region. This is the area where nine major rivers originate in the Greater Himalayas.

Nearly 1.3 billion people live in these basins and three billion depend on these rivers for their food, power and electricity in India, China, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Nepal. Considering half the world is dependent on water flows from there, experts find this ambiguity scary.

In India, 500 million people live in the basin of the Himalayan rivers. Though there is huge variation within the country, we are undoubtedly moving towards water-stressed status. It is important to know the exact behaviour of these rivers as it is estimated that 750 million people are vulnerable to floods and 960 million are vulnerable to droughts. Last year itself, 57 million were affected by floods and 3,000 people lost their lives.

If India is to continue on its economic growth path, water is essential. The Ganga basin has 40 per cent of India8217;s cultivable area. Seized of this matter, the country is in the process of developing 150,000 MW of hydropower and has plans to double it in the next few years.

Isolated studies show that out of the 7-8 glaciers monitored across the world, the Himalayan glaciers are retreating the fastest. There is an urgent need to know more about the Himalayan water system. For regional climate models on the plains, temperature and rainfall over land is sufficient but for higher elevations, it is the cryogenic storage of snow and ice that assumes vital importance.

The World Meteorological Organisation WMO had recommended 10 to 40 Met stations at every 10,000 sq km in the Himalayas, but in India, the number of Met stations is less than one for this area. Experts have now begun to realise that this is inadequate for a mountain range that sustains almost half of the population of the world. Problem is, security and political concerns have dominated over scientific concerns so far.

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The third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC had precise predictions on other basins, but the Himalayas continued to remain fuzzy. The broad estimates said the following: increased temperatures would mean decreasing amounts of snow and ice, increased precipitation with a longer wet season, drier dry season, more high intensity rainfall events and changes in the sediment regime. It pointed to climatic zones shifting, asking for more adaptation. And it is going to be different for every basin.

In this scenario, do we know enough to plan 35 projects in the Alaknanda-Bhagirathi basin, as we are doing now? We are using data that is upto 30 years old to plan and construct reservoirs. Experts now point out that this old data cannot be extrapolated to come up with any reliable conclusions for the future. Some of the studies done for percentage change in decadal mean flow show a sharp fall in the flows at higher reaches in Uttarkashi compared to that of Allahabad in the next 20 years. The only way to go forward is to suggest common solutions through regional cooperation on data collection and exchange analysis.

A beginning has been made at the Abu Dhabi dialogue. In July 2007 senior politicians and governments from seven countries of the region came together. One of the things all the countries upon was coordinated research. The next meeting is in July where the mechanisms that are needed for sharing of data in the region would be discussed, including investments.

It is only after the issue of data is sorted out that conversation on the next level of collaboration can be initiated. Examples exist. For the Orange river flowing between South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho, projects have been designed on a regional basis and the river has been looked at as regional property rather than one divided by national boundaries.

sonu.jainexpressindia.com