-The Hindu India’s leaders must recommit themselves to the ideas and activism of environmentalists involved with Uttarakhand Following flash floods at Chamoli in Uttarakhand, defence personnel are looking for missing persons in a mélange of rock, mud, water, and debris, airlifting rations to inaccessible villages, and repairing bridges and telecommunication networks. Social scientists are assessing the disaster’s impact on the region’s economy. Scientists and policy makers are debating whether climate change or...

-The Hindu The need of the hour is to invest in long-term crisis response mechanisms and resilience solutions Days after a glacier burst in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand caused flash floods, the scientific community is still struggling to understand what triggered the disaster. At the time of writing this article, the death toll was 34 with more than 170 people missing. The floods have also caused heavy damage to public and...

-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...

-The Hindu The Uttarakhand government continues to ignore evidence that hydropower projects in the fragile region exacerbate disasters In 2018, while travelling through the villages near the India-China border in Niti Valley in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, I stopped at Reni village, the birthplace of the iconic Chipko movement. The way to Reni was dotted with hydropower projects that were marred by controversy. The villagers complained about the rampant flouting of norms by...

-CounterCurrents.org The tragedy in Uttarakhand has again highlighted the extreme vulnerability of dam workers who toil often in very hazardous conditions in very remote parts of the country, away from public gaze. In particular the hazards faced by workers are very serious at several dam construction locations in the Himalayan region. While better safety conditions for dam workers are needed everywhere, this need is particularly acute in the Himalayan region. In recent...