WHY NATURAL DISASTERS ARE ON THE RISE : A CASE STUDY FROM INDIAS.K. Sharma It is well known that majority of extreme events and disasters happens in developing countries including India, and it is always the poorest who are the most at risk. The entire Gujarat State experienced one of the devastating Bhuj earthquake in the Indian Shield on the 26th January, 2001 and hitting of Tsunami on the 26 December, 2004 wreaked havoc in SE Asia. As population and poverty increase (India today stands at 1.21 billion, ranking one of the poorest nation in the world), more people are forced to live on disaster vulnerable land like steep hill side acquired by deforesting the area in the Uttarakhand State of Himalayan region of North India, leading to very common and repeated extreme event of land slides, blocking the roads, river flow and damaging the houses by debris fall. This debris flow keeps on depositing on the river beds thus, causing floods in the plain areas, uprooting millions of people of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal every year where millions of people find their livlihood. The global warming is resulting in the melting the Himalayan glaciers . This would be truly catastrophic for India and its neighbours. The Gangotri glacier which supports one of India's largest river basin, the Indo-Gangetic Basin, has been receding since 1780 and started retreating rapidly after 1971 due to global warming. The expected danger of the melting down the glaciers is the widespread flooding followed by irreversible droughts, threatening the livelihood of millions of people. This would not only mean unprecedented food shortage but also a massive water crisis. The Indo-Gangetic basin in North India alone is a home to more than 500 million people. Nearly 70% of the discharge into the Ganga is from the rivers in Nepal, which means that if the Himalayan glaciers dry up so will the Ganga downstream in India causing water shortages for nearly 37% of India's irrigated land. Nearly, Six per cent, or 63.2 million, of India's population live in low elevation coastal zones that are vulnerable to sea-level rise. On the Gujarat coast, sea level rise is displacing villages, as it is many more places along India's 7,500 km-long coastline Twelve more islands are likely to go under owing to an annual 3.14 sea level rise, which will make 70,000 refugees. Five villages in Orissa's Bhitarkanika National Park, famous for the mass nesting of Olive Ridley turtles, have been submerged, and 18 others are likely to go under. |
