• Emerging environmental concerns make cross-border environmentalism crucial for South Asia.
• It is high time that India recognises this and takes the lead.

What is the emerging threat?

• Climate change is introducing massive disturbances to South Asia.
• This is most notably from the rise of sea levels.
• The entire Indian Ocean coastline will be affected.
• But the hardest hit will be the densely populated deltas.
• They include places where the Indus, Irrawaddy and Ganga-Brahmaputra meet the sea.
• The distress is paramount in the northern half of the Indian subcontinent.
• It covers areas from the Brahmaputra basin to the Indus-Ganga plain.

What are the environmental concerns?

• Water - The subcontinent is running out of water resource.
• This is due to the demands of industrialisation and urbanisation.
• It is also due to continuation of colonial model of irrigation based on flooding the fields.
• Rivers - The economic and demographic forces are arrayed against the rivers and their right-of-way.
• E.g. Ganga (Uttarakhand), Teesta (Sikkim) have been converted into dry boulder tracts by ‘cascades’ of run-of-river hydroelectric schemes.
• The tributaries of the Indus were ‘done in’ decades ago through water diversion.
• Natural drainage - Everywhere, natural drainage is destroyed.
• Highways and railway tracks are elevated above the flood line, and bunds encircling towns and cities.
• Reduced flows and urban/industrial effluents have converted great rivers into sewers.
• Rivers are made to carry hundreds of tonnes of plastics daily into the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
• Climate refugees - The climate change discourse has not evolved enough to address this.
• Tens of millions of ‘climate refugees’ could en masse move inland.
• They may be forced to cross national boundaries in the search for survival.
• E.g. the Farakka Barrage affected the livelihoods in downstream Bangladesh, causing the flood of ‘undocumented aliens’ in India.
• Glaciers - The retreat of the Himalayan glaciers is jeopardising the perennial nature of our rivers.

• The 'atmospheric brown cloud' is said to be the reason for excessive melting of snows in the central Himalaya.
• The icefalls of the Himalaya could soon transform into waterfalls.

What are the policy shortfalls?

• Participation - The subcontinental environmental realities demand civic participation.
• But despite being a vast democracy, the Indian state neglects this factor.
• Efforts at preserving the forests and landscapes are mostly taken up by the indigenous communities.
• The urban middle class is not visible in environmentalism, other than in ‘beautification projects’.
• Governance - The Environment Ministry is invariably the least empowered in the major countries of South Asia.
• It falls short of coordinating the ecological response.

Why is India's role crucial?

• Wildlife, disease vectors, aerosols and river flows do not respect national boundaries.
• The environmental trends must be discussed at the regional inter-country level.
• But South Asian societies are apart, when they should actually be joining hands on common ground.
• India is the largest nation-state of the region, and the biggest polluter.
• Also, its population is the most vulnerable.
• Given these, India should take the lead role in cross border environmentalism.

Quick Fact

Atmospheric brown cloud

• This cloud is made up of ‘black carbon’ containing soot and smog.
• It is the result of stubble burning, wood fires, smokestacks and fossil fuel exhaust.
• Dust kicked up by winter agriculture, vehicles and wind are sources as well.
• This high altitude haze covers the Indo-Gangetic plains for much of the dry season.
• It penetrates deep into the high valleys.
• It rises up over the plains and some of it settles on Himalayan snow and ice.
• They absorb the heat and melt much faster.