The Uttarakhand glacier tragedy has a link to climate change and lack of proper development. For years environmentalists have been crying hoarse about the model of development being followed in this fragile mountainous region, and yet the advice was not heeded and the disaster now is a man-made one.
We have childhood memories of incessant rains in Goa during our school days when it poured non-stop for even 8 to 10 days. But we never saw floods like we have started seeing in recent years. Nature’s fury that the State has been facing has been predicted for years by our environmental scientists Dr Nandkumar Kamat and Dr. Joe D’Souza but their warnings have fallen on deaf years.
Goa has been witnessing rampant destruction of its hills, forest areas and low-lying fields. We are killing our age-old natural ecosystems. The traditional drainage systems, waterways and outlets for natural flow of rainwater are choked. The capacitance Goan communities built over centuries with their time-tested strategies designed to secure us from flooding has now all gone for a toss.
If those in power do not take urgent corrective, well planned and sustainable measures to save the natural ecosystems, we will have to face a catastrophic disaster soon.
