Restoring the ecological health of the Himalayas

General Studies Paper 3

Context

• The environmental devastation caused in the Himalayan States of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim has reinvigorated the debate on the “carrying capacity’ of the regions.

Carrying capacity

• The carrying capacity of a region is based on the maximum population size that an ecosystem or environment can sustainably support over a specific period without causing significant degradation or harm to its natural resources and overall health.
• It is crucial in understanding and managing the balance between human activities and the preservation of natural ecosystems to ensure long term sustainability.
• There have been initiatives by the Union government regarding overall development in the IHR. Some of them are the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (2010), the Indian Himalayas Climate Adaptation Programme, Secure Himalaya Project, and the recent guidelines on ‘Carrying Capacity in the IHR’ circulated on January 30, 2020.

Centre’s affidavit on carrying capacity:

• Supreme Court (SC), in response to a petition filed on the matter, has asked the Union government to suggest a way forward regarding the carrying capacity of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), which includes its towns and cities.
• The Union government’s affidavit (filed by the Ministry of Environment) states that the Director of the G.B. Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment should be the lead in assessing carrying capacity and that the carrying capacity of all 13 Himalayan States and Union Territories (UT) should be determined.
• The affidavit further suggests that representatives of State disaster management authorities, the Geological Survey of India, Survey of India and member secretaries or nominees of the Central Pollution Control Board and Central Ground Water Board should also be its members.

What the Court must ensure

• Despite past initiatives especially since the January 2020 guidelines, hardly any progress has been made. The reasons are obvious. There is no report on the total number of States that have been able to prepare action plans on carrying capacity of their regions.
• Failures in the past have been on account of two major reasons. The recommendations made by the Ministry in forming such groups are flawed. The same set of people responsible for the havoc and devastation in the mountains are now being made responsible in finding solutions.
• The focus has to be on sustainable development that encompasses the larger canvas of carrying capacity, and the process should be people­centric.
• Given the importance of the resident population in the IHR living in towns and villages, the expert committee should not become a bureaucratic or technical group. Such a committee (at least a third) should include adequate citizen representation — from panchayats and other urban local bodies.
• In order to evaluate the social dimension of sustainability, it is necessary for the expert committee to direct each panchayat samiti and municipality to present its recommendations by responding to the population sustainability criteria which is well established and should be circulated immediately to each local government centre.

Conclusion:

• There is a wider and longer term need for assessing the overall sustainable capacity of the environment of the whole State (which includes all biological species, food, habitat, water including ecology and agriculture). The expert committee should be asked to focus on the social aspects or population sustainability of the respective States.