Up the glacial pace in building resilience

The October 4 floods in Sikkim was one of the worst disasters to hit the state in the last 50 years. A combination of melting and receding glaciers and excessive rainfall caused a glacial lake to burst its banks, a phenomenon known as GLOF – glacial lake outburst flood – and flood the Teesta. Several reports have indicated that authorities were unaware the lake had breached as the early warning system (EWS) did not function, either due to delayed or incomplete installation. But what is clear is that successive governments did not listen to warnings given by scientists since 2005 about possibility of GLOF events in the region. The flooding shows a major gap in India’s climate-change response, which should include regular risk assessments, building resilience and learning to adapt to a warming climate.

Though India has maintained that adapting to climate change is important, over the years, the focus has shifted to emission reduction. There is no doubt that broadening of India’s approach was necessary. But adaptation and building resilience should have been taken seriously too.

The impacts of warming require a sharp focus on building and deploying EWSs and working on climate-focused interventions. This, in turn, requires change in development and urbanisation strategies and integrating views of scientists, local communities, people with local and indigenous knowledge, and engineers into the decision-making process. Locals should also be asked to keep an eye on changing environments and feed the system ground up. But all this will require investments in R&D and innovation to develop local solutions. Sikkim should be a wake-up call. India must step up its capacity to assess risk, build resilience and adapt.