Slipping Himalayas threaten millions

Press, 17 April 1979, Page 24

Slipping Himalayas threaten millions

By

NEIL BAYNTON

Tokyo The vast Himalayan mountain range is slipping away, putting at stake the well-being of 300 M people in countries such as Nepal, India, and Thailand. For unless the process is arrested, flooding, silting, and agricultural destruction will continue to increase in the areas where they live. These are the alarming findings of a new report recently published by the United Nations University of Tokyo, after a study of the dramatic environmental changes taking place in the Himalayas.

These “geomorphological” shifts begin in the upper reaches of the Himalayas, where natural erosion is consigning large quantities of snow, rocks and general precipitation down into the lower-lying mountains. From there, with the help of widespread deforestation and the annua! monsoons, the whole load is transferred down into India in the form of cloying alluvial silt.

It is, in the opinion of the report’s main author, Dr John Ives, a highly serious problem, and one which is growing all the time. So urgent, is the situation that Dr Ives, who is the co-ordinator of the United Nations University’s highland-lowland interactive systems project. has organised a world symposium on the subject in Thailand on November 13-17 this year. The symposium, which will be held at Chiang Mai University, will look into the big problems facing environmental landscapers near the Himalayas, the mountains which got their

name from the Sanskrit word for “Land of Snow.” Problems divide into two main categories — natural and man-made erosion. The first is far more difficult to deal with, since the natural processes of rock and soil erosiosion, combined with largescale water and glacier movements, are more or less beyond human control when they take place at high altitudes on steep slopes. Proof of this on. a grand scale can be provided by the huge Siwalik Hills, near Chandigarh, India, which geologists believe to be nothing more than an accumulation of past avalanches fallen from the overshadowing Himalayas. There is nothing man can do to stop glacier movements of the size and speed that are known in the Himalayas — some glaciers have been known to move up to 10 kilometres in two months. But where man can stem the tide — although he is not doing so yet — is in the lower foothills of the Himalayas. There, according to Dr Ives, a vigorous programme of reafforestation,, combined with a restriction of agriculture on the steeper slopes, could do much to block the deluge of alluvial soil that so often floods the Indo Gangetic plain, brought down by huge rivers like the Ganges, the Gogra and the Gandak. That the recent trend in the lower Himalayas has been away from re-affo-restation is, according to Dr Ives’ report, a cause for serious concern. He quotes figures from Nepal, where in the last 25 years

half of the country’s total forested area has been cut down. Forest used to account for a third of the country, now it only covers a sixth.

The result of this widespread forest-felling has been the development of terrace agriculture on steeper and steeper slopes, now denuded of trees. But because the earth on these slopes is naturally unstable, the terraces have no resistance to the summer monsoons, and so break up and cascade into the valleys and rivers, and from there down into India.

The result is like one big Niagara Falls of silt — starting at the peak of the Himalayas and crashing down onto the India plains with massive force, sometimes burying entire villages with silt and gravel, and sometimes eliminating farmland altogether. When the silt is not covering homes and fields, it is accumulating in vast mounds and causing rivers mounds and causing rivers to flood with disastrous results.

Nepal in the Himalayas and Thailand farther east have launched re-affores-tation schemes and declared it illegal for anyc le to cut down trees or seedlings in certain hill areas. But the problem is that often these hills are in remote areas, where constant environmental policing is not possible. And a villager who wants to grow crops for a hungry family is not going to be deterred from chopping a few trees down to cultivate the land. But the United Nations University hopes at its November conference to make more people aware of this disquieting state of geomorphological affairs, and to point out that although we cannot stop the roof of the world slipping away, we can at least stop it falling straight on our heads.

‘Oil trouble* The United States Energy Secretary (Mr James Schlesinger) has told Congress that the United States can expect “serious trouble” from fuel shortages this year. But. he said after the hearing that there was no need for petrol rationing. “Gasoline inventories are low. We are going to have serious trouble this sum“Mr Schlesinger told Congress. He said energy problems would continue next (northern) winter unless the United States could build up its stocks of heating fuel. — Washington.