Ladakh paradise lost in a global warning
By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - Paradise was buried under a vast, cataclysmic mud flow that struck
Ladakh district, the beautiful Shangri-la in the Indian Himalayas, last week,
killing over 160 people in and outside Leh, the area's main town.
Flash floods and landslides near Leh, which in two hours also destroyed two
decades of infrastructure growth, unleashed questions about the fatal effects
of pollution and shortsighted economic development on millennia-old sensitive
ecological systems. Leh has become a terrible warning about global warming.
The disaster struck Leh and nearby villages early on Friday, just after
midnight. According to accounts, a wave of mud 20 meters
high and several kilometers wide hit Choglamsar village, practically carrying
it away, then smashed the village into Leh town about six kilometers distant.
Television pictures from the state-run Doordarshan, after the disaster the sole
media link to Leh, showed scenes seemingly straight out of Pompeii, with mud
substituting for the lava from Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the Roman town in
79 AD. It was a chilling sight: a wave of thick mud, still almost two meters
high, eerily lurching along a deserted street like a hungry, undulating snake.
The monster waves left behind smashed houses, a white pick-up van crumpled like
tissue paper and, the worst sight for those in the area, arms and legs of
people buried alive seen sticking out of the deadly mud.
Hundreds of foreign tourists, including 100 Germans, were stranded in Ladakh
district, one of the most popular destinations in north India. August is the
peak tourist season in this remote area, which has only a brief yearly window,
from June to September, of easy access to the outside world. As of August 10,
the Indian armed forces had rescued most of the tourists.
The mud tsunami appears as nature's furious response to a fragile ecosystem
being messed about with for decades. Development, infrastructure changes, and
agricultural experiments to "green-up" the area by the army, government,
private businesses and institutions have fractured the simple, traditional,
nomadic lifestyle of Ladakh and its Indo-Tibetan culture.
"The Leh calamity is the latest devastating effect of unstable climatic
change," said Vandana Shiva, the globally renowned environmental scientist,
agriculture activist, particle physicist and director of the New Delhi-based
Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology. She said similar
landslides had happened in 2005 in Ladakh but went largely unnoticed because no
one died.
"There's an attempt on now to mystify what is happening in Ladakh, attributing
it to cloudbursts, for instance, but it’s basically part of the global problem
of pollution and chaotic climate conditions," Shiva told Asia Times Online
while on a field trip to Dehradun town in the Himalayan foothills.
Shiva, who bore the misfortune of trying to locate her friends missing and
feared dead in Ladakh, was entitled to feel vindicated by the Leh disaster. Her
report in May 16, 2009, "Climate Change at the Third Pole", predicted impending
disaster in the region:
Heavy rainfall which was unknown in the high
altitude desert has become more frequent, causing flash floods, washing away
homes and fields, trees and livestock. Climate refugees are already being
created in the Himalayas in villages such as Rongjuk. As one of the displaced
women said, "when we see the black clouds, we feel afraid.
Ladakh
was mostly under dark clouds in freakish weather when I arrived there exactly a
year after her report was released, on May 16 (see
Trouble in India's Shangri-La Asia Times Online, June 24, 2010). It was
often rainy and bitterly cold in the peak of the region's summer, including
snowfall one morning that astonished the locals.
I disembarked at the Kushok Rimpochee airport in Leh, amid a spectacular
Himalayan setting. But now, mere weeks later, television images from the tiny,
picturesque airport symbolize sudden death and desperation. Parts of the tarmac
have been smashed like a roll of pancake. Hundreds of people squat inside the
airport as Indian Air Force planes ferry relief personnel and material. The
stranded include migrant workers, after many of their employers became paupers
overnight.
The streets in Leh that I had walked about months earlier - past quaint Tibetan
curio shops, cafes, adventure tourism agencies and sundry little establishments
serving an international clientele - will have to be rebuilt from ruins, the
truth of the impermanence of all things made brutally evident.
Leh and the rest of Ladakh, like in Tingmosang village where I spent three
weeks, are not built to withstand the effects of heavy rain. Most houses in
this largely high altitude desert - averaging about 3,352 meters above sea
level - are built out of fragile wood and clay. The gray-brown soil imbues the
barren, stunning landscape with its curious hues, set against the backdrop of
the Greater Himalayan ranges of Zanskar, East Karokaram and Ladakh.
The August 6 mud tsunami was the deadly offspring of intense, unseasonal rain,
a fierce two-centimeter deluge in about two hours, a stark contrast to the
average of nine centimeters received on average each year. The resulting flash
floods soon stirred up the mud avalanche that destroyed much of Leh and nearby
villages.
Monasteries, monks and nuns appear to be only segment of society Mother Nature
has spared. "We are all okay, and we are helping all those who are still
alive," a senior monk, Konchok Samten Lama, told Asia Times Online on August 8
via a satellite phone link, by then the only form of telecommunications with
Ladakh. Volunteers, foreign tourists among them, were helping a traumatized
population, including thousands left homeless.
About two decades of tourism-related developments and infrastructure lie buried
in the mud. Casualties include the two highways connecting Leh to the rest of
India - to Srinagar and to Manali, two of the highest roads accessible by
motorized vehicles in the world. Also gone are hospitals, schools, TV and phone
communication systems, small bridges and the Leh airport.
Dr Shiva highlighted the larger perspective of this local tragedy - one that
occurred as floods affected more than 12 million people in Pakistan and others
in India, China, Germany and Poland, and as forest fires devastated vast tracts
of Russia.
The Himalayas, the "Third Pole" of the planet, supports half of humanity, with
its 5,240 glaciers feeding Asia's biggest rivers.
"The lives of billions are at stake," Shiva says of climate change and disaster
preparedness in the world's biggest mountain range. "Local people, such as
Himalayan communities, are experts on local ecosystems and the changes due to a
destabilized climate. It is this expertise which needs to be mobilized for
active solutions."
Leh has served a deadly reminder of the peril of ignoring early warning signals
from local people.
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