Project planning should keep melting glaciers in sight: Exper

New Delhi, July 18 (UNI) The Gangotri glacier has this year developed a large number of crevices, reinforcing the fact that Himalayan glaciers are melting at an alarming rate due to global warming, threatening adequate water supply to rivers like Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra, the lifeline of millions of people in the country.

Therefore, before planning massive dams and hydel power plants, or the proposed interlinking of rivers, the country should give adequate thought to this factor, says environment scientist Samrat Sengupta.

Mr Sengupta, who is working on climate change with the World Wildlife Fund(WWF), and his team had to defer their plan to go to the Gangotri glacier because of the formation of crevices in the glacier near Tapovan.

He said the increased formation of crevices in the Gangotri indicated increased rate of retreat of the glacier.

From 50 years hence, there may be substantially reduced water in the rivers on the strength of which the government was setting up big power and irrigation plants at the cost of billions of rupees, he told UNI.

''So far climate change factor has not been incorporated in the long-term power planning in the country, which can at best be described as just shutting eyes to an imminent development,'' he said.

Now in the 11th Plan, there is the talk of the Integrated Energy Planning, but the government has not done wide consultation with stake holders, says Mr Sengupta.

Mr Sengupta said that if all activities emitting green house gases which lead to global warming were stopped at present, even then enough emissions have taken place to increase the average Himalayan temperature to 1.3 degree celsius by 2050 to 2100 at 4000 mt altitude from the preindustrial era.

He said that after a few decades, Gangotri may be reduced to a critical level affecting everything in the region. There are five million people who inhabit the basins of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Indus, which rely on the perennial supply of melt-water from the Himalayas.

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