Drying up

Indian NGO Navdanya has come up with a study showing the effects of global warming on the Himalayan region, some of which are already directly impacting the lives of people.

In the Uttarakhand region, the Navdanya research shows that in the past ten years 34% of some 809 perennial streams in the region have become seasonal or completely dried up. On average, water discharge has dropped 67%.

Combined with decreasing precipitation, drought caused 50-60% crop failure in the middle to lower mountain regions in 2007-2008; in 2009 that figure increased to 90% in rain-fed subtropical areas. In Ladakh, a high altitude desert, unprecedented rainfall has led to flash floods and washing away of villages (documented in the film “The Third Pole).

Contrast this with the Ministry of Environment report “Himalayan Glaciers: A State of the Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change” by geologist V.K. Raina. It calls the changes a natural increase of temperature and loss of ice.

Whether it be the Drung Drung glacier, or the Siachen glacier or Gangotri, the report calls the retreat as small and indicative of “poor response to global warming”.

It talks of the topographic theory that maintains that because the temperature decreases with the altitude, mountain uplift causes glaciations, Himalayas should always retain glaciers in one form or the other.

Navdanya wonders how then the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro disappeared, and how there could have been snow in the Arctic!

Finally, it assures there is no need to worry as the monsoon accounts for most of the flow of the Ganges. Navdanya counters that the monsoons account for most the river flow in the monsoons, the glacial melt accounts for flow in the lean season when it is most needed. With reducing glacial melt, the Ganges will become a seasonal river, not the perennial river that it is.

What does one make of such controversial reports? Who validates them?