Joshimath’s future is at risk. The holy town of about 20,000 residents, burrowed in the Himalayas is sinking due to subsidence.
Revered by Hindu and Sikh pilgrims, they have watched the earth slowly swallow their community. They pleaded for help that never arrived, and in January their desperate plight made it into the international spotlight, according to the Times of India.
Located at a height of 6,150 feet (1,875 meters), Joshimath is a gateway to several Himalayan mountain climbing expeditions, trekking trails, and pilgrim centers.
The holy town was built on piles of debris left behind by years of landslides and earthquakes. Scientists have warned for decades, including in a 1976 report, that Joshimath could not withstand the level of heavy construction that has recently been taking place, reports CTV News Canada.
The town is believed to have special spiritual powers and is believed to be where Hindu guru Adi Shankaracharya found enlightenment in the 8th century before establishing four monasteries across India, including one in Joshimath.
The 2021 Uttarakhand flood and its aftermath
It was believed that a part of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off in Nanda Devi National Park in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district on February 7, 2021. The resulting flash flood left at least 31 people dead and around 165 were missing.
However, satellite images showed no lakes in the valley and that a landslide very clearly triggered the events. The Times of London reported that a flood was caused by a portion of the glacier being torn away and causing a landslide.
It was eventually decided that the environmental changes caused by climate change probably contributed to the geographic conditions that allowed for the disaster.
Heightened environmental concerns
The geographic state of the whole area prior to the disaster has been described as “fragile,” according to The New York Times. Scientists had warned the Government of India for many years that the Himalayas had been warming at a dangerously high rate and the region’s ecosystem had become too physically exposed to the dangers of development projects
Joshimath’s future is at risk, experts and activists say, due in part to a push backed by the prime minister’s political party to grow religious tourism in Uttarakhand, the holy town’s home state.
On top of climate change, extensive new construction to accommodate more tourists and accelerate hydropower projects in the region is exacerbating subsidence – the sinking of land.
The town’s loose topsoil and soft rocks can only support so much and that limit, according to environmentalist Vimlendu Jha, may have already been breached. “You can’t just construct anything anywhere just because it is allowed,” he said. “In the short term, you might think it’s development. But in the long term, it is actually devastation.”
Boosting religious tourism is a key plank of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. To that end, authorities, ignoring expert warnings, have continued to move forward with costly projects in the region, including hydropower stations and a lengthy highway.
The 889-kilometer (552 miles) long all-weather highway in particular, is a controversial project with some experts saying it will exacerbate the fragile situation in the upper Himalayas where several towns are built atop landslide debris.
In the meantime, cracks continue to form in homes around the area, and construction of a new rail line had to be paused, as well as the construction of a road for the Char Dham project that would ferry tourists faster to the Badrinath temple after cracks emerged in people’s homes.
Bottom Line? The heavy construction required for hydropower, like blasting boulders, diverting river flows, and cutting through forests, in a region already vulnerable to climate change, could do irreparable damage, experts warn.
