Let us adapt
Jammu and Kashmir is witnessing a huge change in its weather patterns. From dry hot summers to extreme cold winters, the region is witnessing change in patterns and weather behaviour.
During the rainy period’s cloudbursts, flash floods, hailstorms and landslides are no longer rare tragedies that strike once in a decade or so, but are becoming a routine. During the past three weeks or so, hailstorms and extreme downpour have resulted in huge loses to standing crops and ripening fruit cultivations.
What was once a ‘freak weather event’ is now a seasonal pattern, arriving with the rains and leaving behind broken roads, washed-away homes, and grieving families.
From Chasoti in Kishtwar last year, where a cloudburst on the Machail Mata route killed scores, to repeated devastation in Doda and the Chenab Valley, the map of loss keeps expanding.
Importantly, the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, the UT’s lifeline, is repeatedly cut off. Schools are shut on short notice. Rescue teams from NDRF, SDRF, Army, and police rush into valleys where phone lines are down and bridges are gone. For mountain communities, fear now arrives with every weather alert.
The June to mid-September period is proving to be most dangerous as incessant rains marked with cloudbursts saturates the slopes, and the land gives way. Cloudbursts too are being witnessed suddenly. They are sudden, hyper-local, and violent. But the vulnerability is not a mystery.
Notably, climate change is being felt as a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and the monsoon is behaving erratically. Short, intense bursts of rain are replacing steady showers. Besides, deforestation, hydropower projects, and road widening have destabilized slopes that were already fragile.
Another factor that is proving more dangerous is the human exposure. People are becoming extremely selfish and tend to encroach on forest land raising homes, shops and other establishments.
Surprisingly, humans are building faster than the land can bear. This phenomenon has been experienced since the past three decades when unplanned residential areas were planned, forest land was encroached and even river banks were not left alone.
The Himalayas are young mountains, geologically active and ecologically sensitive and the huge civil works around their peripheries is adding to the pressure causing huge damages.
Even though the disaster management strategy has been in vogue and the administration has strengthened emergency operation centres and district disaster plans, but we cannot rescue our way out of this crisis.
The pattern is clear- relief after damage is not enough when damage repeats every year. What is needed is a shift from disaster management to risk reduction. Primarily, no more construction permits on riverbanks, nullahs, and known cloudburst paths should be allowed. Even the existing illegal structures must be mapped and relocated over time. A house on a flood channel is not a home. It is a risk to everyone downstream.
Similarly, cloudbursts are no longer stories on the news. They are the sound of rain at night and the decision whether to sleep or watch the stream. As another wet season begins, authorities are right to urge caution. Avoid travel during red alerts. Stay away from rivers and slopes.
But caution alone will not fix a broken climate and a stressed mountain. J&K sits on the frontline of the Himalayan climate crisis. We can either adapt with hard choices about where and how we build, or we can keep counting the dead every year. The mountains will not change their physics for us. We must change our habits for them.
