Cooperate on climate change —Iftikhar Gilani

With just under two months remaining before the Copenhagen climate talks, there is a burning need for India and Pakistan to not only to evolve a common position on environmental issues, but also to forge a cooperative mechanism to protect the environment and save their water sources in the region.

When Pakistan’s chief negotiator on climate change, Farukh Iqbal Khan, called on India’s minister of state for environment, Jairam Ramesh, few months ago, they expressed the need to coordinate and evolve a common stand lest the developed nations thrust their emission standards and other positions on developing countries like India and Pakistan.

“We had a useful discussion. We decided to coordinate our positions. The issue of climate change may help us to break diplomatic logjam,” said Ramesh, referring to his meeting with Pakistani official.

However, there is burning need for both countries to sort out some pressing environmental issues bilaterally. Since the issues are linked to farmers in the Pakistani heartland and touch the lives of ordinary citizens, they need to evolve a mechanism beyond political rhetoric.

Depleting glaciers: Almost all the Indus line glaciers, Pakistan’s water houses, are melting and receding at an alarming rate, more rapidly than other Himalayan glaciers. The nose of the Kolhai glacier in Kashmir, one of the largest glaciers in the Himalayas, was recorded to have receded by almost 22 metres in 2007, while several smaller adjacent glaciers have disappeared completely. Almost 15,000 Himalayan glaciers form a unique reservoir which supports perennial rivers such as the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, which are the main source of fresh water for billions of people in the region.

Ironically, while India has taken tough measures restricting tourist and pilgrim traffic to save the Gangatic glaciers, it tends to sidestep the Kashmir glaciers, which are source of water for the Indus and the Jhelum. Blinded by politics to whip up communal passions on land allotment to the Amarnath Yatra board in Kashmir Valley last year, India’s Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party overlooked a report prepared by its own NDA member Dr Nitish Sengupta in 1996 asking for regulating Amarnath-bound pilgrims to preserve the fragile ecology and environment of the region. The forestland handed over to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) at Baltal near Sonamarg houses the Nehnar and Thajwasan glaciers.

It is interesting to note that the BJP government in the north Indian state of Uttrakhand applied Dr Sengupta’s report in Gangotri, where in May 2008 they issued a notification restricting the number of pilgrims and tourists to 150 a day to visit Gomukh, the origin of the holy river Ganges. Gomukh is as holy a shrine for Hindus as Amarnath in the southern mountains of Kashmir. Last year, despite disturbances, half a million pilgrims visited the Kashmir shrine over a period of two months.

Over 20,000 pilgrims are at the cave shrine against the recommended 3,000 per day, plundering the glaciers. Glaciologists have also raised fears of environmental degradation, ecological imbalance and adverse impact on the Nehnar glacier, situated at a height of 4,200 meters around Baltal near Sonamarg, from the heavy rush of pilgrims.

A paper presented in 2005 by Prof MN Kaul, former principal investigator on glaciology at the Department of Science and Technology in India said: “The ecology, the environment and the health of the glacier can be under severe threat [if] the Baltal route to the holy cave [is] frequented by thousands of pilgrims.”

He added that “there are 6,500 glaciers in the Himalayan region in India, and out of that, 3,136 glaciers are in the mountain belt of Jammu & Kashmir...these glaciers constitute 13 percent of the state’s total land, and if allowed to assume strength year after year, we can generate 80,000 MW of electricity.”

Referring to the Amarnath pilgrimage, he said: “it is for the first time that the Baltal route has been exposed to heavy pilgrim traffic, which is likely to affect the ecological balance and the health of the Nehnar glacier.”

Environmentalists have often raised concern that apart from the sewage generated by pilgrims, they also throw tons of non-biodegradable items made from polythene and other plastics directly into the river. This has resulted in the deterioration of water quality.

One expert, MRD Kudangar, has recorded that chemical oxygen demand of the river has gone up to 17 and 92 mg per litre, which is beyond permissible levels. Water with such levels of chemical pollution cannot be recommended for consumption.

It has been estimated that every day during the pilgrimage, 55,000 kg of waste is generated. Apart from this waste, the degradatation caused by buses and vehicles carrying pilgrims, trucks carrying provisions and the massive deployment of security forces further contribute to air pollution.

Another factor is the threat posed to local inhabitants from the crowding of an ecologically fragile area where they have to compete to retain their access and rights to resources, both in terms of water and land.

Recently, Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh also agreed that most countries have regulated tourist inflows into their mountainous regions. India’s national environment policy also calls for measures “to regulate tourist inflows into mountain regions to ensure that these remain within the carrying capacity of the mountain ecology.” A UN-sponsored study, “Mountains of Concrete: Dam Building in the Himalayas”, predicted dramatic decreases in flows in the Indus basin in 100 years.

The study, undertaken by Sripad Dharmadhikari of the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra for International Rivers, predicts extreme changes in river flows due to global warming and climate change. As glaciers melt, water in the rivers will rise and dams would be subjected to much higher flows, raising concerns about dam safety, increased flooding and submergence. And with the subsequent depletion of glaciers, there would be much lower annual flows, affecting the performance of dams, built with huge investments. Unfortunately, even dam construction was being planned without any assessment of these impacts.