The damage caused by the flash floods in Leh and Uttarakhand regions could have been minimised or even averted had their respective state governments put in place warning systems to alert citizens of impending disasters which were predicted by climate change reports. The IPCC fourth assessment report in early 2007 had warned of precisely such climate impacts.
The Climate Revolution Initiative has released RTI replies filed by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) environment ministry which show that it never issued any advisory or note of warning to state governments or the public regarding extreme weather events or climate anomalies.
A RTI application filed with MoEF sought information pertaining "any advisory or note of warning regarding climate anomalies occuring in the short run (10-15 years)" issued to any ministry, department or state government. In its reply, the ministry stated that it had no information on any such advisory.
MoEF was also asked to provide information on "educational or awareness campaign specifically on causes and/or impacts of climate change that has been carried out by the ministry since the release of IPCC 4th Assessment Report." The ministry replied that no such campaign had been carried out.
Another RTI application was filed with MoEF seeking its position on public awareness about climate change impacts and climate politics among the masses in urban India. In its reply, the ministry refused information on the ground that no information has been sought. Yet, it added in reply that "urgency of climate change has been advocated through various conferences / seminars of climate change and clean development mechanism." The reply went on to state that "as far as (knowledge of) global political response in urban India is concerned, no such information is available."
“The government has acted irresponsibly to scientific warnings on climate change,” said Manu Sharma, founder of the group, which runs an awareness campaign on climate change using RTI. “Rather than working to prevent such disasters, the government chose to attack the science behind the predictions.”
The Leh cloudburst, which led to flash floods and mudslides, claimed about 180 lives and injured about 400 people besides causing widespread damage to public and private property.
Last month, the DRDO’s lab in Leh, the Defence Institute for High Altitude Research (DIHAR) found that the flash floods in Leh were closely linked with climate change. The analysis was done to look into the reasons that triggered the cloudburst in the Leh region on Ladakh, which is usually considered unnatural because it is a rain shadow area. DIHAR analysed the weather data of the last five years in terms of monthly temperature, rainfall, humidity and snowfall.
But isn’t it conventional thinking in scientific circles that no single climate event can be attributed to manmade climate change? “Yes, but that notion is fast changing,” said Sharma. At a recent conference on climate change attribution organised by US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), scientists proposed that the opposite should be true. They argued that all climate disaster events should be assumed to have link with climate change until evidence surfaces to the contrary.
The sheer growing incidence of climate disasters worldwide overwhelmingly supports this claim. The number of disasters occurring in the last 30 years is four times the number in previous 75. The increase in number of climate disasters worldwide from 1950 is around ten-fold today.
This year itself, world has seen a string of unprecedented climate disasters from heat waves and forest fires in Russia; to floods and landslides in China; to floods in Pakistan; and, breaking up of a massive glacier in Greenland. India has had its own cloudbursts at Leh and Uttarakhand, as well as droughts in Bihar and subsequent flooding in Gandak river. All these are in line with IPCC predictions.
