The deluge deluges Chitral villages -Article

By Israr Ahmed

Sultan Faraz, like hundreds other villagers of Sonogur, a village of Chitral district of NWFP, was sleeping in his house on June 29, 2007, when during the wee hours, a loud and strange sound sent him rushing out of his home. He along with other villagers rushed to the tops of nearby hills and safe places when they saw their houses and herds of cattle being swept away by a wall of water rushing down from the mountain.

Sultan and his fellow villagers were able to scramble to safety. They were lucky: "If it had come without any bang that served as a wakeup call, most of the villagers would not have survived," said Sultan Faraz.

On June 29, 2007, a centuries-old glacier on the mountain near Sonogur village broke lose. Consequently, the huge wall of water that rushed down the valley played havoc with the beautiful village.

The water gushing out of glacier washed away more than 200 houses completely and partly damaged some 140 houses of the 500-house village of Sonogur. It also destroyed standings crops and fruit orchards.

Schools, hospitals, grains godown, mosques, other buildings, Net Photo of Sonoghor bridges and roads connecting the villages to adjoining areas, besides thousands of cattle of the villagers were also swept away.

Sonoghor village is known for its natural beauty, crystal clear streams, mouth watering fruit and mesmerizing ambience in the beautiful mountainous district of Chitral.

Newspapers attributed the breakup of the glaciers to the rainfall. But this claim was contested by environmental expert and scientists. The area received heavy rainfall every year, but no glacier breakup was reported in the past due to rainfall.

Experts are of the view that the mountainous valley is under the influence of global environmental changes that are causing drastic environmental, climatic and even geographical changes across the globe. They attributed the breakup of the glacier to global warming. If it is the case, then the situation is alarming for the whole area, as there are hundreds of glaciers located on the overlooking mountains, which threaten over 300 small villages located in the foothills.

Scientists are constantly warning the severe implications of global warming on the glaciers of Himaliays, Karakorum and Hindu Kush ranges. Findings of studies, conducted by scientists recently revealed that the glaciers of the regions were swiftly retreating and vanishing owing to global warming and increase in the temperature of the region.

A report recently published in the Nature said Himalayan glacial lakes were filling up with more and more melted ice and 24 of them were now poised to burst their banks in Bhutan, with a similar number at risk in Nepal. But that is just the beginning, the report said. Future disasters around the Himalayas will include 'floods, droughts, land erosion, biodiversity loss and changes in rainfall and the monsoon'.

"The roof of the world is changing, as can be seen by Nepal's Khumbu glacier, where Hillary and Tenzing began their 1953 Everest expedition. It has retreated three miles since their ascent. Almost 95 per cent of Himalayan glaciers are also shrinking - and that kind of ice loss has profound implications, not just for Nepal and Bhutan, but for surrounding nations, including China, India and Pakistan", the report cautioned.

Eventually, the Himalayan glaciers will shrink so much that their melt waters will dry up, say scientists. Rivers fed by these melted glaciers - such as the River Indus, Yellow River and Mekong - will turn to trickles. Drinking and irrigation water will disappear. Hundreds of millions of people will be affected, they warned.

"There is a short-term danger of too much water coming out of the Himalayas and a greater long-term danger of it not being enough," said Dr Phil Porter of the University of Hertfordshire. "Either way, it is easy to pinpoint the cause: global warming."

As the studies pinpointed the disastrous consequences of glacial melt for the people, watershed of the Himalyas and other nearby mountain range along the Tibet Plateu, the melt and the climate changes could also have catastrophic consequences for Chitral valley as well as for the whole of our country.

The glaciers located on the mountains of Chitral release water steadily throughout the year, most critically during the hot, dry, sunny periods when water is most needed. Once the galleries vanish, the major streams fed-by glacial water rushing down the mountains could become seasonal or dried up.

These streams are sources of irrigation and the agriculture of the area is dependent on the streams’ waters. Moreover, these steams also supply drinking water to the inhabitants of the valley.

The stream water is also important for the Chitralis in other ways too, as it is used for grinding grains and for generation of hydel power, which is sole mean of power generation for the area.

Owing to the streams and hill torrents, the area has a vast but untapped potential of hydel power generation. Hence, the glacier-fed streams are of great importance and may rightly be called lifeline for the area.

A professor of department of environmental science, Peshawar University, said the whole areas as well as the world was in grip of environmental changes, mainly owing to global warming and increased proportion of greenhouse gases that are said to be major cause for increase in global temperature.

He was of the view that more breakup of glaciers located in the mountainous areas of Chitral and Northern Areas might occur in future.

It is worth mentioning that the River Kabul, which is a main tributary of Pakistan’s largest and important river, Indus, also originates from Chitral with water released from the glaciers located in the mountains of Hindu Kush, Karakorma and other ranges in the area.

In broader perspective, the scenarios has far-reaching implications for the whole country as well as for the region as rivers fed by the glacial melts are main tributaries of Indus and the rivers of neighboring countries.

A United Nations’ body studying global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in a stark forecast in May 2007 had warned that the glaciers in the world’s highest mountain range could vanish within three decades.

"Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps getting warmer at the current rate," the report said. The total area of glaciers in the Himalayas is likely to shrink from 193,051 square miles to 38,600 square miles by that year," the report said.

While some scientists dispute the assessments of the UN body and the rate of retreat is highly variable, experts on glaciers in China, India and Nepal are already seeing the short-term effect of glacial melting. As the glaciers recede, lakes on the Tibetan Plateau are rising, and experts foresee floods, landslides and mudflows from mountain lakes overrunning their banks.

"They can cause tremendous loss of property, or even lives. They can destroy bridges, villages and roads," said Yao Tandong, one of China’s premier glacier scientists and director of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in Beijing.

Scientists say 1.3 billion people reside in areas affected by glacial retreat, either in flood-prone areas or in locales that rely on year-round supplies of fresh water from glaciers rather than from the monsoon rainfall of only three or four months.

Glaciers are retreating across an area that’s the largest high-altitude land mass on the planet, bordered by the Himalayas to the south, the Tian Shan range to the north, and the Pamirs and the Karakorum Mountains to the west.

Throughout the area, experts say, dwindling glaciers may lead to unstable mountainsides, greater sedimentation in rivers and disrupted irrigation systems, in addition to threatening water supplies to large populations.

Besides the UN report and other studies, a US State Department report released recently warned that Asia is expected to face a serious shortage of fresh water due to climate change, with more than one billion people forecast to be hit by the crisis.

Melting glaciers in the Himalayas -- which contain the largest storage of water outside the polar ice caps, and feed seven great Asian rivers -- may lead to increased flooding in the short term and reduced water supply in the long term, the report said.

"Reduced freshwater availability in Asia could affect more than one billion people by the mid-century," said the department's annual report on safe water and sanitation strategy in developing countries.

The report to the US Congress added that "increased floods and changes in coastal water temperatures could result in greater morbidity and mortality due to diarrhea disease."

While water demand is exploding in the rapidly growing region, it faces supply pressures due to poor infrastructure operation and maintenance, inappropriate technology, and weak technical and financial management, the report said.

"Unless fundamental changes occur in water management practices, the region will experience harsh water shortages that will adversely impact economic growth," it warned.

Coming back to Chitral, the affected people of recent flesh flood caused by heavy torrential rains in the district were left in lurch by the provincial as well as federal governments. The recent flood has displaced hundreds of people and rendered scores of them homeless in many villages of the district.

The worst affected villages are Sonogur, Rayen, Kushum, Booni, Garam Chashma and others.

Many affected people, talking to Weekly Pulse on telephone, complained that the provincial as well as federal government had abandoned them. They said owing to indifferent attitudes of both federal and provincial governments, they were forced to lead a pathetic and miserable life under open sky and without any relief.

They are very annoyed over the cold response of federal and provincial government toward the relief and rehabilitation of flood victims.

The affected people of Sonogur said although the district government had provided some edible items to them, it did not meet their needs, adding that firewood, kerosene or natural gas had not been provided to them for cooking food.

The supply system of potable water was also damaged in the affected villages and there is a dire need to immediately rehabilitate the system as people are without any safe drinking water and they are forced to consume contaminated water, which is causing gastroenteritis, dysentery and other abdominal diseases.

The district government has distributed 40kg wheat flour bag and 5kg each of ghee, pulse, sugar and rice, which is meant for two families. An affected man said he had 13 members in his family and he had received only 20kg of flour, which could hardly last two days.

Gul Hayat Khan Advocate told this scribe on phone that the flood had badly damaged standing crops and properties, besides washing away cattle and other livestock in many villages.

Citing an affected village, Rayen, he said flood has played havoc with property and standing crops in the village and some 25 houses were washed away and crops of over 70 villagers were completely damaged.

He said the irrigation channels of the village were also destroyed by the flood and the remaining crops that were not affected were drying up due to scarcity of water. "There is no plan in sight to restore the irrigation channels by the government," he added.

He said not a single official of the district or provincial government, including district nazim, bothered to visit the affected village

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