-The Hindu An avalanche in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand early this month claimed at least 62 lives, destroyed two hydropower projects and ravaged the region. Jacob Koshy reports on how development projects are endangering the lives of people in the young and fragile Himalayas The Rishiganga river looks like an idyllic brook from the balcony of Gyan Singh Rana’s two-storey house. The former headman of the village of Raini, who is in...

-TheNewsMinute.com Experts say that the narrative that a country must choose between environment and development itself is wrong. Merely days after the fatal landslide in Kerala’s Pettimudi in Idukki district in August last year, the spotlight was back on the Gadgil report on the Western Ghats. The report, submitted to the government of India in 2011, had designated the Pettimudi region among the most sensitive ecological zones in the Western Ghats and...

-Down to Earth The issue is about carrying capacity of the fragile region, which is even more at risk because of climate change The flash flood in high Himalayas, which has claimed lives and wiped out two hydroelectric plants on the Ganga, should be a grim reminder of the mistakes we continue to make. There is no rocket science here about why this devastation happened. The Himalayas are the world’s youngest mountain...

-TheThirdPole.net As the world warms and glaciers retreat faster, the need is to brace for more disasters and minimise impacts by reviewing ill-planned dams and roads Under the weight of a suspected avalanche, a massive chunk of ice and frozen mud broke away from a glacier in the high Himalayas and fell into a lake that had formed at its snout due to climate change. The moraine around the lake collapsed and...

-Down to Earth The cumulative effect of hydropower projects projects has turned out to be more environmentally damaging than sustainable, given the current policy of the Uttarakhand govt Human activities profoundly affect the earth’s climate and mountains are a sensitive indicator of that effect. The mountain ecosystem is easily disrupted by variations in climate owing to their altitude, slope and orientation to the sun. Several scientists believe that the change occurring in the...