Act before disaster strikes

A breach in the embankment of river Kosi has created havoc across half of Bihar, causing not only immediate misery, but also leaving a serious impact on the long-term livelihood of millions of already poor people. Established between 1954 and 1959, the Kosi river embankments were meant to protect the people of Bihar from regular flooding threats, but have under-performed consistently with the reality being far from model predictions made at the time. The key question that we face today is what lessons do we learn from our mistakes and history. Yes, we coin attractive phrases like the — ‘Curse of the Kosi’ or the ‘Sorrow of West Bengal’ (the Damodar river), but beyond recognising the recurrent misery inflicted by these rivers what corrective actions have been taken? And, how long does it take to find a solution — either for mitigating the impact or reducing vulnerabilities? How many tragedies, and what extent of the damage created, can be attributed to the force of nature vis-a-vis poor governance, neglect and improper enforcement of regulations? What processes do we have for making those with the powers and the responsibility to deal with this issue accountable? How can we better cooperate with our neighbouring countries to deal with such challenges? It is not the intent here to merely point a finger at the government, at any or all levels, and assuage any feelings of guilt and sympathy. The fall-out of the Kosi floods will be felt across the length and breadth of the country, and we need to recognise our own roles in events such as these. The research/academic community urgently needs to start engaging in finding disaster hotspots and understanding the underlying causes and expectations. They also necessarily have play a part in defining solutions — short and long-term; institutional and infrastructural — for the same. NGOs and community based organisations need to do much more and much better on creating disaster preparedness and disaster response systems in communities with the help of local governments. The corporate sector, too, has a big stake in the same resources that are being degraded, as also in the well-being of their customers. The experiences from recent natural disasters makes one wonder how well prepared would India be in facing the threat of climate change impacts. The Fourth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) talks about the real threat of extreme events. It places hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events that will continue to become more frequent at a very likely probability level and the higher intensity of future tropical cyclones at a likely probability level. The window of opportunity that this report had identified for greenhouse gas emissions to peak by was up to the year 2015. If global emissions continue to grow beyond this time frame then the cost of reversing climate change would increase exponentially. All recent data reveal that we are highly unlikely to achieve this milestone. Therefore, India should immediately start mapping its vulnerable hotspots and must start putting in place proper risk mitigation and vulnerability reduction measures. It is unfortunate that despite being recognised as the IT leaders of the world and being a source for technical expertise for a large number of countries, India has not developed the capability to use climate models effectively, nor has it been able to scale down the impact of climate change to a geographical level that would allow such adaptation strategies to be framed with any level of confidence. Not only is this the failure of the government and the research/academic community, even the response of the well-endowed industry of India is most surprising. They seem to be adopting a bit of an ostrich-like approach in signaling their complete dependence on government policies, regulations and analysis in defining their own response to this globally universal challenge. The impact of climate change and the consequent large-scale human disasters that might face us would affect every economic activity in the country. The glaciers of the Himalayan region may well become a tangible and visible example of natural disasters that are yet to come. Some projections have said that huge melting would occur in the next 20-30 years itself. The consequent increase in the flows of the water in the Himalayas’ river system could cause these rivers to burst at their seams. The increased flows would put devastating pressure on constraining infrastructure, such as dams and embankments, as well as on producing infrastructure, such as power plants. This phenomenon could, in the longer term, lead to devastating water shortages threatening nearly half of India’s current population. What more would it take for India’s leaders to shake off their inertia and fulfill the expectations and responsibilities vested in them by society at large?