On February 7, a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in Chamoli, Uttarakhand resulted in widespread devastation, causing over 50 deaths with hundreds still missing. Soon after the disaster, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the need to revamp the country’s national defence system during his address at the World Sustainable Development Summit, where he proposed leveraging India’s human resources and technological abilities to enhance its disaster management capabilities. However, these changes must be complemented by an entirely new framework that explicitly addresses the issue of GLOFs. Therefore, in order to effectively tackle the threat of GLOFs in the future, alongside technological advancement, India’s disaster management strategy requires a shift from the current reactive policy to a preventive one.
According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, “Glacial Lake Outburst Flood is a phrase used to describe a sudden release of a significant amount of water retained in a glacial lake, irrespective of the cause.” GLOFs can cause hydrometeorological induced floods, resulting in erosion and devastation of human life, infrastructure, and plantation. While GLOFs have been an issue for states that house parts of the Himalayas for years, with climate change resulting in rising temperatures, the number of such incidents has surged. According to the Indian National Defence Management Authority, several glacial lakes have been formed due to glacial retreat in the Hindu Kush Himalayas. Further, India Today’s Data Intelligence Unit published a report saying that around one-third of Uttarakhand’s tehsils are vulnerable to GLOFs. Moreover, the report also identifies 5,000 glacial lakes in the states, with over 500 at the risk of an outburst.
Yet, India has no law or policy addressing the dangers of this natural disaster. In fact, the efforts by the National Action Plan on Climate Change to set up a National Centre for Himalayan Glaciology was also abandoned by the central government for reasons unknown to the public. Hence, in light of the increasing threat they pose to human life and property in the regions closer to the Himalayan range, the central government must refocus its efforts on GLOFs.
As of today, India’s approach to GLOFs is entirely reactionary. For instance, when a similar incident took place in 2014 in Ladakh, a special expert force was set up to assist the army in conducting the rescue operations. However, even after the widespread devastation caused by the incident, there were no policies adopted to prevent such an incident from occurring in the first place. A similar response was seen in this month’s incident in Uttarakhand. Admittedly, the authorities conducted extremely expedited and efficient rescue operations, which also saw a commendable use of technologies like drones, remote cameras, and sonar equipment to locate and rescue victims who were stuck in tunnels following the outburst. However, once again, these were all in reaction to the incident, and the lack of preparedness of the authorities and the local communities aggravated the damage caused.
While every natural disaster requires pre-emptive measures to mitigate the devastation, it is especially crucial with GLOFs, as they occur in locations that are highly inaccessible and therefore take longer for disaster management and rescue forces to reach. In fact, a report by the Indian Express suggests that 80% of rescue operations are conducted by the local community, who do not have the required technology and equipment to carry them out efficiently. Likewise, the natural defence rescue forces have complained that they are in dire need of “innovative methods”, such as motor launches, to be able to reach these sites in time. Therefore, it is crucial to reduce the burden on under-prepared and under-resourced local authorities by empowering the national defence rescue forces.
The first step towards achieving this lies in the central government taking charge of the policymaking on GLOFs. This will help in establishing a uniform policy that allows for nationwide resources, research, and technology to be deployed for GLOF-prevention efforts. While Uttarakhand has a highly robust framework surrounding GLOF prevention, the lack of resources makes it difficult to access remote locations such as Chamoli. Once the central government deploys the country’s top scientists and supplements their work with the required resources, they can gain a better understanding of these natural phenomena and work towards preventing or at least reducing the damage caused by GLOFs.
This accrued knowledge, however, must be supported by parallel investments into Early Warning System technologies to help identify and map glacial lakes. India must bring its preventive technologies for GLOFs up to par with its landslide prediction systems, which are acknowledged to be robust and efficient. For guidance, it can lean on its more experienced allies, like Norway, who has already vouched to work with India in tackling bilateral and global environmental issues. In fact, Norway has already assisted Bhutan in combating the dangers of GLOFs by investing in developing technologies like the Synthetic-Aperture Radar Imagery system to help automatically detect any new water bodies.
Another crucial element for a policy on GLOFs is spreading awareness about the disaster. For this, there is a lesson to be learnt from India’s neighbour and close ally, Bhutan. In this Himalayan kingdom, which is exceptionally prone to GLOFs, authorities have initiated widespread awareness campaigns, along with mock drills, to educate the high-risk populations about the warning signals of such disasters. In fact, some members of the local community have said that they are now familiar with the smell of the mud before such a flood occurs, allowing them to successfully relocate or evacuate populations from the threatened areas. This model is particularly relevant because, like Bhutan, India, too, has large human settlements between glaciers and hydropower projects. Hence, such awareness programs will be extremely crucial for the success of any more extensive policies on the issue, specifically in light of the proximity of the local population to the glacial lakes.
Apart from the abovementioned solutions, in the long term, Indian authorities also need to actively work towards mitigating the impact of climate change, which has been identified as a key cause of the increasing number of the GLOFs in Uttarakhand. In fact, the dam whose burst resulted in the flooding of Chamoli was the subject of a Public Interest Litigation that was presented before the Supreme Court of India by the locals of the region in 2018. The petitioners arguedd that the government had not conducted extensive research on the impact of the Rishiganja Hydroelectric Project on the Chamoli region’s fragile ecosphere. Pursuant to this, the court ordered a committee to inspect these claims. However, the committee gave a green signal to the project, completely ignoring its impact on GLOFs.
Like this project, there are several other ongoing hydropower constructions in risk-prone regions of Uttarakhand. While these projects are said to benefit local populations by securing water supply and even controlling floods on some occasions, the costs of their construction include hill-cutting and largescale felling of trees, both of which act as natural barriers to GLOFs. Hence, any approval of such projects must be done with a meticulous cost-benefit analysis in order to guard against further disturbance to the region’s ecosphere.
Unfortunately, while the need for a policy revamp is apparent, GLOFs are likely to feature relatively low on the central government’s list of priorities, primarily because the affected areas are largely remote and do not form a part of the political conversation in most parts of the country. Instead, the government is likely to continue to adopt a reactionary approach to gain applause from the public for its quick response time. However, the failure to introduce preventative and predictive measures could cause long-term losses to the region, with the population, their property, and infrastructure facing repeated existential threats.
What Can India do to Prevent or Mitigate the Impact of Another Uttarakhand-Like Disaster?
India urgently needs a policy on Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, the disaster that caused the widespread devastation in Uttarakhand. The approach, however, must be preventive and not reactive.
February 18, 2021
SOURCE: THE HINDU