The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
Hailed as one of the engineering feats of the 20th century, the Three Gorges Dam across China's Yangtze river is having a disastrous impact on the environment. Only a year after the completion of the world's largest hydroelectric project, Chinese officials have admitted that the project is causing severe ecological …
People living near the Tehri dam on the Bhagirathi river in Uttarakhand are in trouble. Villages on the slopes overlooking the reservoir are threatened by increasing landslides and those living downstream, once ousted for the building of the dam and rehabilitated, are losing their new homes to an airport expansion …
A valley full of rare geysers and thermal vents in Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula disappeared on June 3 after an entire mountainside collapsed only to reappear few days later after a drop in the water level in the lake, formed by the landslide. The Valley of the Geysers is one of …
Water-related disasters include flood, windstorms, drought, water epidemics, famine and landslides. These combine with other water-related hazards such as pollution and chemical spills, aquifer depletion, land subsidence, salinisation of arable land, marine intrusions, sea and storm surges, coastal flooding and water-borne diseases to affect ecosystems and food and livelihood security …
six mine labourers died in a recent landslide in Tollem iron ore mine in Goa's Sanguem taluka. Only two bodies have been recovered; the rest remain buried under a heap of mining waste, estimated to be about 150 metres high and covering an area of 12,000 sq m. Villagers allege …
If soil quarrying is a threat in the terai, mining poses huge hazards in the hills of Kumaon. Soapstone or talc and magnesite quarries have been taking over commons for over two decades, depriving local people of large tracts of the forestland, pasture, watersheds and farming land. Eastern Bageshwar is …
according to the National Highway (nh) 31A Bachao Committee (nhbc), traffic disruption, due to a landslide in August, continues on nh 31A in Kalimpong, West Bengal. nhbc claims that construction on the Teesta Low Dam Stage III project at 27th Mile led to the landslide. About 50 metres of the …
Entire Himalayan region is vulnerable to rain-induced (torrential rainfall) hazards in the form of flash flood, cloudburst or glacial lake outburst flood. Flash floods and cloudburst are generally caused by high intensity rainfall followed by debris flow or landslide often resulting into blockade of river channels. The examples of some …
power boost: To overcome power shortage, Pakistan has recently given approval to the country's five independent power companies to set up plants at an estimated cost of us $1 billion. These power producers
monsoon rains may trigger fresh disasters for the people who survived last year's earthquake in Pakistan, if urgent action is not taken, warn experts. The tremor on October 8, 2005, caused a massive landslide in Hattian Bala tehsil of Muzaffarabad at the confluence of two streams
Karnaparayag in Uttaranchal has become landslide-prone, warns an expert. If mitigation measures are not initiated in time, says Aniruddha Uniyal of the Dehradun-based Disaster Management and Mitigation Centre (dmmc) in an article that appeared in the October 25, 2004 issue of Current Science journal, the township could go the Uttarkashi …
function graph() { var popurl="image/20040930/26-graphs.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=300,height=475,scrollbars=yes") } High altitude sickness The Brits made India's hill-stations. Invariably, a responsible officer of the colonial government chanced upon a scene of delirious beauty that completely seduced his senses. Ootacamund or Udagamandalam (Ooty) in the Western Ghats was
function illustration() { var popurl="image/20040930/30-illus.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=500,height=450,scrollbars=yes") } Scarcity amidst plenty summarises the water problem ailing hill-stations today. They receive good rainfall but there is no mechanism to collect runoff for later use. Result: water shortage every year. How did the Brits manage it? They cashed on the terrain, and gravity, …
The stinky spectacle of hill-stations getting buried under their own garbage is turning more real. Look down the slopes and you will see mounds of coloured plastic bags, and tourist staples such as empty packets of potato chips and plastic water bottles. All of which is mixed with vegetable waste …
Evam Piljain, an 80-year-old Toda who's spent all her life in Ooty, feels distraught at the sight of her hometown. "I cannot sit in the verandah anymore,' she says. She moves to her drawing room and gazes wistfully at a photograph of Ooty taken in the early part of the …
Planning is non-existent for India's hill-stations, admit hill municipalities. In the absence of a master plan, a free-for-all situation prevails where one constructs wherever one finds free space; if there is lack of space, one can simply add another storey to one's house. There is no tourist plan, which becomes …
Incredible India. The land of mystic splendour. The hidden paradise. These are just three slogans to convince people to turn themselves into tourists and land up, every summer, in droves in hill-stations. Ooty's annual flower show attracts 0.2 million tourists over two days. In addition, it receives over 0.3 million …
function illus() { var popurl="image/20040831/26-illus.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=440,height=320,scrollbars=yes") } Disaster struck the Tehri dam site in Uttaranchal at 10:15 pm on August 2. A huge landslide inside the vertical shaft of a tunnel claimed the lives of 29 workers and left about 12 injured. According to Puneet Kansal, district magistrate, Tehri, one …
