It’s dark in the Himalayas

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 India’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...