Demand for a Himalayan policy gathers pace

In the wake of killer floods striking Uttarakhand, the demand for a separate Himalayan policy dealing with natural calamities, safeguarding the interests of local people and enhancing the quality of eco-systems, has come to the fore.

For the past few years, social activists and environmentalists in Uttarakhand have been advocating such a policy.

In 2011, the then Union minister of state for agriculture, Harish Rawat, had announced the Centre was preparing an action plan for Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, crisscrossed by the Himalayas that separate the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan plateau. But thereafter, nothing was heard on the issue.

Now, the demand has come to the fore once again. "Neither the Centre nor the state government showed any enthusiasm for a separate Himalayan policy. Unless you have a concrete policy, we will remain directionless," said social activist Anil Prakash Joshi, the founder of Hesco, a Dehradun-based non-governmental organisation working in the Himalayan region. Uttarakhand Environment Protection and Pollution Control Board (UEPPCB), in 2004, prepared the "state of the environment report" that dealt with the most important environmental issues such as state planning, as well as a separate environment policy. The document said the state would shortly develop its environment policy, report for which is now gathering dust.

The development planning processes need to integrate environmental considerations and concepts of sustainability, in order to become truly responsive to people's needs, while preserving the environment, said C V S Negi, former member-secretary of UEPPCB, during whose tenure, the "state of the environment report" was prepared. With nature playing truant with the hill state, the report proposed the separation of regulatory and policy making functions of the state and integrating environment considerations into the development policy process.

The report said UEPPCB should be solely vested with the regulatory role of environment management in the state.

Other factors like haphazard growth, water shortage, rapid migration, unemployment should be taken into account into the future policy, said a top government official, while commenting on the separate Himalayan policy.

Chipko leader Sunderlal Bahuguan, a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, supported the idea of a separate policy, saying big dams were destroying the rich biodiversity of the region. "Our main concern is through the new Himalayan policy, we will be able to protect our forests and vast biodiversity of the region," said Bahuguna.