Most of us have been glued to our mobile and TV screens where we have been watching terrifying visuals of flash floods, submerged habitats and massive landslides especially in northern India. The situation in plains is no better than what has happened in the hills. There has been widespread death and destruction during this monsoon. But we refuse to respect mother nature and learn as a society.
There are two key aspects of this challenge and if we don’t address them, the situation would get worse with every passing year. The first aspect is poor urban planning and the second aspect is climate change.
Urban planning is largely managed by local civic bodies now. And they are the most corrupt authorities. There is hardly a habitat in India where one doesn’t have illegal constructions. The nexus between local municipal councillors, engineers and the builders lobby has been primarily responsible for this mess.
One of the key causes of flooding across urban India is that the local water bodies where the rainwater used to flow have vanished. The builders have covered them with loads of mud and converted them into foundations for multi-storeyed buildings. Where there are no water bodies, there also the sewage flow is directed towards the rainwater drain leaving no place for rainwater to flow down to a waterbody or seep into the earth.
It is a no-brainer. Every house needs to have a sewage drain and rain water drain. And these drains are built according to the size of the plot and the colony. Now as the builders continue to construct multi-storeyed apartments giving them to 10 families where only two families were supposed to stay; the original sewage drains don’t have the capacity to carry that much waste. So, the builders connect the sewage pipes of 8 out of these 10 units to rainwater drains. The result is that when it rains, the rainwater drains are already choked with sewage and they don’t have any capacity to carry rainwater. And the rainwater thus stands still on the roads and then gradually enters your houses and shops and factories!
The story is marginally different in hills and popular tourist destinations where sewage is thrown into the rivers by restaurants and hotels aided by a large number of tourists who give a damn to the environment. The builder lobby has also reached there and several multi-storey buildings have come up at these places. In addition, the mining is also having a severe impact on the course of rivers in the mountains. This is a perfect recipe for disaster.
According to a Niti Aayog report (Reforms in Urban Planning Capacity in India; September 2021), “Master plans are statutory instruments to guide and regulate the development of cities and are critical for managing urbanisation as well as ‘spatial sustainability’. However, 65% of the 7933 urban settlements do not have any master plan. This leads to piecemeal interventions, haphazard constructions, urban sprawl, and environmental pollution, which can further aggravate issues such as traffic congestion, flooding, etc. Various shortcomings in the approaches of city planning and bottlenecks in plan implementation too need to be resolved.”
Climate Change and Extreme Weather
Meanwhile, climate change is also knocking on our doors. Centre for Science and Environment’s annual report on ‘State of India’s Environment 2023’ has highlighted the first visible impact of climate change in the form of ‘Extreme Weather’. According to the report, India experienced extreme weather events on 271 of the 304 days from January 1 to October 31, 2022. These events claimed 2,952 lives and damaged 1.8 million hectares(ha)crop area.
According to the CSE report, “38 of the 59 days saw extreme weather events, spread across 21 states and union territories. Uttar Pradesh saw extreme events on 25 days, followed by Madhya Pradesh (24 days) and Punjab (15 days). The country experienced its third wettest January since 1951. Yet, most of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, recorded deficit rainfall. This is surprising because central and southern regions were wetter than normal. The crop area affected by these events was 33,184 ha and 22 people lost their lives due to these extreme weather events during winter.”
The report brings out the fact that nearly 45 per cent of India’s forest and tree cover is all set to emerge as ‘climate hotspots’ by 2030; 64 percent of the forest and tree cover may face ‘high severity’ of climate change by 2050. In terms of area this would mean nearly 315, 667 sq. km and 448367 sq. km respectively.
A ‘climate hotspot’ is an area expected to be adversely impacted by climate change, while ‘high severity’ means that the green cover is expected to see a rise in temperature between the ranges of 1.5 and 2.1 degree Celsius. These hotspots would also witness a change in rainfall patterns with an increase or decrease of 20 to 26 per cent.
This data is based on the findings of the Indian State of Forest’s Report 2021. The report goes on to predict that the Himalayan states and UTs — Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand — will record the maximum increase in the temperatures and also possibly experience a decrease in rainfall. However, extreme rainfall may increase in the states of the north-east.
Conclusion
According to Niti Aayog, India is the second largest urban system in the world with almost 11% of the total global urban population living in Indian cities. In absolute numbers, the urban population in India is more than highly urbanised countries/regions across the globe. The country has reached a turning point in its journey of its economic transformation wherein half of the country would be ‘urban’ in a few decades. Urban growth is expected to contribute to 73% of the total population increase by 2036. Over the years, cities have expanded and become burdened by the stresses and strains of unplanned urbanisation.
If we add ‘extreme weather’ due to climate change and ‘poor urban planning’, the writing on the wall is clear. We have seen a glimpse of it during the last few days. If we don’t take corrective measures now, we might not be left with many choices in future as nature seems to be taking things in her own hands to right all the wrongs that we have done to her.
The writer, an author and columnist has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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