Bengaluru: In an online press conference on March 29, the newly-launched People for Himalaya Campaign released a five-point demand charter listing out the needs of people living across the Himalaya that will enable the region to become disaster-free. Environmentalists and activists from across seven Himalayan states and union territories – including climate activist Sonam Wangchuk from Ladakh who recently ended his 21-day climate fast – spoke at the online press conference and requested state and central governments, as well as all party leaders and candidates, to take note of their requirements ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Among the main demands put forward in their demand charter are an alternate model of development that recognises the knowledge and needs of local communities, decentralising governance across the Himalayan regions, and fast-tracking actions such as the immediate release of compensation after disasters so that people in the region can recover and rebuild faster after the many disasters they are now facing due to destructive development in the region.
Wangchuk, who also endorsed the demand charter as part of the People for Himalaya Campaign, said that Ladakhis are continuing their protest. They will march towards the border in a “Pashmina March” on April 7, to catch the Union government’s attention regarding their demands for statehood for Ladakh and the implementation of the Sixth Schedule, since these would give local communities the power to make decisions that would help conserve the fragile ecosystem and environment of the region, Wangchuk added.
Also read: Over 50 Organisations Sign Declaration to Draw Attention to Climate Disasters in Himalayas
Demand charter towards a disaster-free Himalaya
After a conference in February attended by activists, environmentalists and scientists, more than 50 non-profit, social, environmental and rights organizations joined hands under the banner of the People for Himalaya Campaign in March and put together a common vision statement for the Himalayan region as a whole.
Based on this vision statement, the People for Himalaya Campaign have now released a ‘demand charter’ or maangpatr, said Manshi Asher, founder of Himdhara Collective who is also associated with the Campaign, at an online press conference.
The main intent of the demand charter is to move towards a Himalaya that is secure from disasters, and how we can achieve this, she added.
“The entire Himalayan region is going through extreme distress right now,” she said. “These are manifesting in several forms, whether they are slow onset disasters such as the retreat of glaciers due to global warming…to immediate disasters that wreak a lot of havoc that we see on television, whether they are floods or landslides.”
Laws pertaining to the region are being made top-down without taking into account peoples’ needs and local communities are not being involved in the process, Asher added. So the demand charter is a request especially to every party candidate ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to take note of these requirements in the ecologically fragile region, Asher said.
“This is a historic moment for the Himalayas and calls for solidarity among people across the region,” she said.
The main demands put forward in the five-point charter include:
- Strengthening the regulation, monitoring and planning of land use, land-use change and forestry in the Himalaya, which includes a moratorium on all mega infrastructure projects such as tunnels and hydropower projects.
- Granting communities constitutional, land and forest governance rights: this includes the proper implementation of constitutional provisions and laws that support decentralised governance and decision-making such as the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act 2006, and protecting pastoral minority communities like the Van Gujjars and Bakarwals and their migratory routes
- Encourage transparency, knowledge sharing and exchange so that indigenous knowledge and local communities can also be part of governance.
- Building resilient, equitable and sustainable mountain societies: This includes having a legal mechanism in place for the proper implementation of SC/ST Sub plans in mountain states
- Have a strong disaster response system ready, including time-bound and full union government support whenever extreme events occur.
“We need an economic model of wellbeing based on sustainability, resilience and equity – especially intergenerational equity,” said Asher.
“Pashmina March” on April 7
Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk was among the several speakers from seven states and Union Territories to speak at the online press conference.
Wangchuk said he and other Ladakhis would begin a “Border March” or a “Pashmina March” on April 7, in which they would march from Leh to the Indo-China border to draw the union government’s attention to their demands for the implementation of the Sixth Schedule in Ladakh to help preserve and protect the fragile environment of Ladakh, among others. Wangchuk had been on a 21-day climate fast surviving on just salt and water to highlight these issues. He ended his fast on March 26. Currently, Ladakhi women are on Day 3 of their 10-day climate fast, after taking the baton from Wangchuk.
“We want that before the upcoming elections end, the government comes through on the promises they made [regarding the implementation of the Sixth Schedule and more],” Wangchuk said. “I hope that all of India will support us on this, because it concerns not just us but the whole of India because the Himalaya are an important source of water…if people cannot hold governments to their promises then there is no point to these elections.”
“Just like Gandhiji protested through a satyagrah in his Salt March at Dandi using civil disobedience, we are undertaking a Pashmina March on April 7,” said Wangchuk, at the online press conference.
Wangchuk also called on everyone across India to undertake eco-marches on April 7 to mark any destruction occurring to the environment in the name of development (vinash or destruction in the name of vikas, or development).
“There is an urgent need to save the entire Himalaya…and make the government reconsider several times before they chop the land and sell it to companies,” Wangchuk added.
‘Join hands together and fight’
Emotions ran high at the online press conference as activists and leaders of peoples’ organizations from across various states in the Himalaya spoke about the concerns their regions face due to destructive development across the Himalaya, which has been enabled by governments. A common refrain among the speakers was the importance of coming together to highlight such issues and make demands.
“We should join hands together and fight this aggression…I will only call it aggression because how can somebody come from Lucknow and decide what our policy will be,” asked Raja Muzaffar Bhat, writer, independent researcher and activist based in Jammu and Kashmir.
“We know what our policy should be. We have learnt from our ancestors…these [glaciers] are our treasures, our ecological, geological treasures,” he said.
Bhat said he has eight cases pertaining to the environmental destruction in Jammu and Kashmir pending at the National Green Tribunal because all the institutions that are supposed to enforce and implement the country’s environmental laws — like the Pollution Control Board, the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, the forest department, urban local bodies — have failed to implement environmental laws even though they receive fat salaries to do so, he said.
“And can a handful of corporates destroy our future like this,” he asked at the press conference, referring to private companies that have been permitted to conduct several projects in these areas.
The Doodh Ganga river on the outskirts of Srinagar has faced unimaginable and excessive mining over the last four years, he said. And excessive tourism is destroying Jammu and Kashmir; pollution is the norm and there is no proper solid waste management system in place either, he added. Even the state of Ramsar sites such as Wular Lake is bad due to eutrophication and leachate flowing in from rivers, he added.
“However many we are here today, we need to join hands together for this big fight…wherever we live in the Himalayan states, we have to come together and fight this battle,” he added.
Local people bear the brunt
Environmental activist Guman Singh, who is also the coordinator of the Himalaya Niti Abhiyan in Himachal Pradesh said that they, the people of the mountains, were bearing the brunt of destructive development. The disasters are all human-induced, Singh said.
“The union government’s push for vikas [development] is responsible for this,” he stated categorically. “We are people of the mountains, we have lived here for centuries…our first basic right is the protection of the mountains and the protection of the people of the mountains.”
He, along with other speakers including Mohan Chandra Saikia, an activist from Assam and part of the North East Dialogue Forum, touched on the issue of how a series of mega hydropower projects have been built on every Himalayan river, and how floods caused by the opening of dams have caused large-scale devastation in the environment cover, and affected local communities drastically.
Compensation hurdles
Saikia also noted how compensation has not reached affected people yet, or in time. Mayalmit Lepcha, from the Affected Citizens of Teesta movement, also mirrored this sentiment. The union government has not yet declared the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood of the South Lhonak Lake that occurred last year as a national disaster, Lepcha said.
“The government still doesn’t have the data on how many people died in that disaster and how many went missing,” she said. “It has been more than five months now. Affected people have not got any compensation, they [the government] has not talked about resettlement or rehabilitation…but the government has money for their political meetings,” Lepcha noted.
People are also undergoing a lot of mental trauma because many do not have homes anymore, or have to live in shelters or relatives’ houses, she added.
Money is also a factor in Arunachal Pradesh, where the government has “sold all its rivers”: more than 100 dams are to be built in the state, said Ebo Mili, an environmental activist from Arunachal who is also associated with the Dibang Resistance, a peoples’ group protesting the building of the Dibang Dam in the state. The dam has been in the limelight for the ecological, environmental and cultural impacts it could cause on people and the local environment due to its construction. Another issue in the state is the union government’s push for monoculture — specifically oil palm plantations in the region — Mili added.
Marginalised communities are worst-hit
Just as local communities bear the brunt, marginalized communities — such as Scheduled Castes — are most affected because even when compensations or help come through, caste-based discrimination comes into play, said Vimla Vishwapremi of the Parvatiya Mahila Adhikar Manch who works with women and marginalized communities in Himachal Pradesh. Women and children are also affected more, she added.
“Social disasters are also a part of the climate disasters we are seeing,” she said.
Aman Gujjar from the Van Gujjar Tribal Yuva Sangathan, Uttarakhand, added that those who contribute least to these disasters and the climate crisis are the worst impacted – be they pastoralists, landless Dalits or women. “First we get affected by disasters and then policies like forced plantations on our lands further restrict our rights and livelihoods,” said Gujjar.
Atul Sati of the Joshimath Bachao Sangharsh Samiti said this caste-based discrimination was something they saw happening at Joshimath too, when people were being assigned help and rehabilitation. The hill town of Joshimath, in Uttarakhand, faced land subsidence in early January 2023 and experts have noted how this was primarily induced by badly planned developmental activities.
New Joshimaths are still being created due to destructive development in the Himalayas, Sati said. The Char Dham Pariyojana has caused a lot of problems in the state, he added, highlighting the incident where 41 workers were trapped for a grueling 17 days in a half-excavated tunnel in Uttarkashi that is part of the Pariyojana. The project aims to reduce travel time to places of religious importance in the state at the cost of the ecology and the environment, experts have said.
‘Take note of our needs before the elections’
The fate of the Himalaya will impact not just the people who live there, but the entire country and southern Asia too, Guman Singh said.
“We would like to tell all party leaders that they respond to all our concerns in their election manifestos,” Singh said. “Unfortunately, politics has fallen to a low in this country now…politics is being played on corporate money…as we have seen the tamasha unfold in the name of electoral bonds. The same company whose tunnel in which people were trapped in Uttarakhand, has paid money in electoral bonds. But this will never make a case. But these questions will rise, and we, pahad ke log [people of the mountains] will raise these questions. We are appealing to the Indian public that they give a fitting reply to corporate-powered politics and support us for the environmental protection of the mountains,” he said.
Wildlife Biologist Tsewang Namgial and glaciologist Smriti Basnett also spoke at the conference; the former noted how the three Hs of development – Hasty (fast, unplanned construction), Haughty (developmental activities undertaken with ego and pride without consulting local communities) and Haphazard development – need to be replaced with the three Ss: Slow, Sensible and Sustainable development. Basnett pointed out how crucial protecting glaciers is given the rates of climate change and global warming we are seeing, as well as the deposits of black carbon – due to pollution – that will hasten glacial melts.
In the days to come, the People for Himalaya Campaign will publicize its demand charter through media campaigns and through letters to political parties, the Campaign said.
