The Indian Himalayan Ecosystem as Source for Survival

Introduction

The Himalayan region, spanning Bhutan, Nepal, northern India, Pakistan, and the Tibet Autonomous Region, may be defined by its mountainous geography, but it is characterized by tremendous ecological diversity. This diversity results from the altitude, slope, and aspect of the mountains and complex glaciology and hydrology as well as the climate and the micro-climates that the range itself shapes. It is evident in alpine pastures and fertile valleys; high altitude deserts and montane; temperate, tropical, and subtropical forests; grasslands; and glacial lake and river systems. The ecological diversity of the region is matched by that of its human communities, which adhere to a range of religious beliefs and cultural practices and pursue complex livelihood strategies. Understanding this relationship—between people and the environment—has been an enduring theme in studies of Himalayan ecology. Some scholarship takes the Himalayan region as an important site in which to learn how human communities are shaped by the natural environment; other studies consider the reverse, how people influence the ecological communities within the Himalaya. In this respect, the Himalaya has been an important site for the broader study of human-environment relations. Contentious debates on population, environmental degradation, natural resource management, and conservation that extend well beyond the region are all well represented within this regional literature. Notable too is the way that these issues have proved of interest for academic inquiry, policy, and practice and have given rise to scholarship on political ecology, community forestry, pastoralism, climate change, and biodiversity and conservation.

General Overviews

Himalayan ecology has been approached and studied from a range of disciplinary perspectives that nonetheless are connected by a common concern with human-environment relations. Attention, broadly, to Himalayan ecology as a distinct subfield appears to have gathered momentum in the 1990s, in the wake of perceptions of an environmental crisis in the Himalaya. Prabhakar 2001 provides a broad overview of different Himalayan ecosystems. An edited volume, Maithani 1991 describes the ecosystems and environmental resources of the central Himalaya and places greater emphasis on the physical and natural environment and relatively less weight on the ways in which human communities shape and are shaped by it. Kapoor and Kapoor 1994 considers the reciprocal impacts of human activity on different Himalayan ecosystems. More recent works have expanded the ways in which human-environment relations are conceptualized in the Himalaya. Thus, Singh 1998 highlights the diversity within mountain ecosystems in what is now Himachal Pradesh but does so from an historical perspective. Guneratne 2010 covers a wide swath of the Himalayan region and shows how anthropological perspectives that attend to local understandings of environment and natural resources may be brought to bear on thinking about Himalayan ecology.
The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) covers ~95 districts of the Indian union, which starts from the foothills in the south (Siwalik); the region extends to the Tibetan Plateau in the north (trans-Himalaya). The IHR occupies the strategic position of the entire northern boundary (northwest to northeast) of the country and touches almost all the international borders of seven countries with India. The contribution of India is ~16 % of total geographical area, out of which ~17 % area is under permanent snow cover and ~35 % is under seasonal snow cover. The IHR is responsible for providing water to a large part of the Indian subcontinent and contains varied flora and fauna; it was estimated that ~40 million of the population reside in this region. The Indian Himalayan rivers run off ~1,600,000 million m ³ of water annually for drinking, irrigation, hydropower, etc. The IHR has been a potential source of important medicinal herbs and shrubs. This region is extremely rich in plant life and abounds in genetic diversity of all types of fauna and flora. The medicinal virtues of the northwest (NW) Himalayan plants are well known from the early times of the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata and are mentioned in the oldest Hindu scriptures, viz., Rigveda, which is said to be the source of the Ayurvedic medicine system. These high hills are the storehouse of numerous herbs and shrubs, which are exploited not only for the pharmaceutical industries worldwide. In fact, a large percentage of crude drugs in the Indian market come from this Himalayan region. Besides this, the Himalayan regions remain as a source of many cereal crops, pulses, vegetables, fruits, and animal husbandry. The climate change impact is at a global level, and this Himalayan region is no exception. Due to the climatic changes, a lot of disturbances happening like flooding, drought, wildfire, and other global changes derive from pollutions and overexploitation of resources. These changes drastically degrade our natural resources, and nowadays it challenges a need to adopt a comprehensive master plan for conservation of these resources for the survival in the future.

The Indian Himalayan Region, spanning 12 Indian states, has long been absent from the centre stage of Indian policy.

Source: Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

• 'Green Bonus'
• BJP Manifesto
• Indian Himalayan Region
• Northeast India

The National Democratic Alliance has formed the government for the second consecutive term. A large number of people in the northern mountains of India are thus remembering the promises that the Bharatiya Janata Party made pertaining to the Himalayan states in its manifesto.

The Indian Himalayan Region, spanning 12 Indian states, has long been absent from the centre stage of Indian policy when it comes to combating a large number of issues. There is depopulation in Nagaland and parts of Himachal Pradesh causing underdevelopment. On the other hand, population growth and rapid urbanisation as well as practices like shifting cultivation and unauthorised mining are leading to the degradation of the ecosystem and its resources in parts of Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Assam. The IHR is thus prone to flash floods, forest fires, earthquakes and landslides. An increasing human footprint, coupled with unplanned growth, has added to the vulnerability of the residents. The mountains are fragile, remote, marginal, and multifunctional. It is time that the wide gap between pledges of development and corresponding achievements start to shrink.

Before this year’s parliamentary elections, the BJP was the only party to include a special segment for the Himalayan states. It mentioned a ‘Green Bonus’ for the Himalayan states to ensure the protection of the forests and to promote forestry. But several issues remain unclear: on what basis would the bonus be offered? What will be considered as ‘protection and promotion of forests’? Whose responsibilities will they be? If maintaining a certain percentage of forest is the criteria, it could be bad news for Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, and Nagaland. These states have more than 70% of their areas under forest cover. This is also the region where the decline of the forest cover has been the highest. Whatever percentages are fixed against each state, they might be lower than the present forest cover, thereby opening up a large part of these forests for human activities that could have an adverse impact on them. Moreover, a considerable part of such forests is managed by local ethnic communities in Northeastern states like Arunachal Pradesh. How the reward will flow from the state authorities to community managers is still unclear. What has added to the scepticism is the new forest draft policy, which weakens community participation in forest management.

The BJP manifesto promised to develop the Northeast while remaining sensitive to ecology. Yet, there is no mention of any plan to resolve the issues of human rights violation and other atrocities perpetrated on those who have been impacted by the hydroelectricity projects. The proposal to overhaul environmental clearances for the hydropower sector can only add to these woes.

Among the Himalayan states in IHR, the northeastern region got a bit more attention in the BJP manifesto through the Purvodaya scheme. Even though the plans talk of sustainable social development and conflict resolution in the mountains, the path of development seems to be focused on resource extraction, especially hydropower. With its mountainous topography and perennial rivers, the Himalayas have a huge potential for hydro-electricity generation. But the lack of scientific environmental impact assessment, the murky history of resettlement of dam-affected populations and local resistance have become matters of concern. The BJP manifesto promised to develop the Northeast while remaining sensitive to ecology. Yet, there is no mention of any plan to resolve the issues of human rights violation and other atrocities perpetrated on those who have been impacted by the hydroelectricity projects. The proposal to overhaul environmental clearances for the hydropower sector can only add to these woes.

A holistic understanding of the mountain ecology seems missing even after 72 years of Independence. Existing policy harps on the economic underdevelopment of the region or controlling insurgency while ignoring the fact that the root cause of some of these problems might lie in the mismanagement of the mountain ecosystem.

Concerns

• HKH region has lost 15% of its glaciers since the 1970s, and in a best-case scenario, will lose another 15-20% by 2100. But if global action against climate risks falters, as much as 90% of snow in the region may disappear.
• Increased glacial melting means that flooding disasters will escalate over the next fifty years, and this will be followed by drastically reduced flows in rivers like the Ganga and the Indus, leading to acute water stress, large scale migration, and conflict.
• On average, winter snowfall is decreasing and winter days are shrinking too. In the past five to six decades, the number of cold nights per year has been declining by one night per decade, while the number of warm nights is increasing by 1.7 nights per decade.
• The South-East monsoon is also slated to strengthen considerably over the next century, causing heavy, unpredictable and potentially ruinous downpour. The crux of the matter is that climate change has already hit the Himalaya hard, and things are only going to get worse.
• Many glacier-covered peaks could turn into bare rocks in less than a century. Nearly 240 million people live up there in the mountains. So, that’s a quarter of a billion people which, somehow, not all that many people are aware.
• When the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had published its highly anticipated fourth assessment report in 2007, one claim in the report about the Himalayas had made waves. This was that the region will be utterly devoid of glaciers by 2035. This was later found to be an anecdotal remark which had not been verified.
• A source of embarrassment for the IPCC, the Himalayan *“Third Pole” has not received as much importance in subsequent IPCC reports, including the fifth assessment report of 2013-14, possibly due to a lack of available research. The ICIMOD report, which seeks to plug this information gap, is the work of 210 scientists, which was, in turn, peer-reviewed by another 135.
• *The international research team dubbed the plateau the “Third Pole” because it contains the largest stores of freshwater in the world outside of the North and South poles.
• According to its findings, if the global average temperature is indeed kept to a 1.5°C rise over pre-industrial levels (as agreed upon at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference), this will mean a 2.1°C rise in the HKH region due to elevation-dependent warming. In such a scenario, the region will lose 36% of its glaciers by 2100.
• When it comes to river basins, the HKH assessment report establishes that just the Indus, Ganga and the Brahmaputra basins between them support 916 million people. Of these, 580 million people depend on the Ganga basin alone. Higher glacial melts due to warming, according to the report, will cause these rivers to see continuously increased flow till 2050-60. This will exacerbate chances of flooding and glacial-lake burst disasters, such as in Uttarakhand in 2013.
• Towards the end of this century, pre-monsoon water-flow levels in these rivers will drastically reduce, affecting agricultural output as well as non-consumptive use such as hydropower generation.
• The report warns that a lack of adequate action now with regards to dams, the equitable sharing of hydropower benefits with mountain people, and the lack of robust transboundary cooperation for international rivers can lead to a deepening of social inequities and heighten the chances of conflict.
• Responses to hydropower is varied among the HKH countries. While in India, the consensus is shifting away from hydropower and dams, especially with the entry of renewable energy, in countries like Nepal and Pakistan, dams are still desired.

Way Forward

• Policymakers must start looking at the economic valuation of ecosystems seriously.
• While infrastructure projects such as dams and roads gather pace in China, Nepal, and India, there is no cooperation between countries to tackle the growing problems associated with climate change.
• The Himalayan states must build a viable and sustainable forest-based economy.
• Promote local organic agriculture and its produce as speciality, high-value premium produce of a fragile ecology.
• Use ecosystem-based tourism for development but with safeguards and local benefits.
• There is a need to build policies for sustainable urbanization in the mountains.

NMSHE: National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem

• The National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE) is one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).
• NMSHE is a multi-pronged, cross-cutting mission across various sectors. It contributes to the sustainable development of the country by enhancing the understanding of climate change, its likely impacts and adaptation actions required for the Himalayas- a region on which a significant proportion of India’s population depends for sustenance.
• NMSHE seeks to facilitate the formulation of appropriate policy measures and time-bound action programmes to sustain ecological resilience and ensure the continued provisions of key ecosystem services in the Himalayas. NMSHE intends to evolve suitable management and policy measures for sustaining and safeguarding the Himalayan ecosystem along with developing capacities at the national level to continuously assess its health status.
• Recognizing the importance of scientific and technological inputs required for sustaining the fragile Himalayan Ecosystem, the Ministry of Science and Technology has been given the nodal responsibility of coordinating this mission. However, the mission involves valuable cooperation of Indian Himalayan States, and the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to achieve its goals.