That precisely is what ICIMOD is out to do in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, secure the springsheds to ensure water security and thereto enhance the climate resilience in the face of the increasingly worry on water woes with climate change impacts casting its shadow over the planet.
By Salam Rajesh
The lure of the Himalayas matched equally with the cool setting of the lush green integrated research station – the Living Mountain Lab – of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in the outskirts of Kathmandu, capital city of the mountain country of Nepal.
ICIMOD’s Living Mountain Lab developed at Godavari is a fairly demonstrative field-based station housing a wide collection of epiphytic and terrestrial floral species typical of the Himalayan region, some of which constitutes the rare floral diversity of Manipur – such as Taxus baccata and Rhododendron arboreum.
ICIMOD is an international organization – an intergovernmental knowledge and learning centre – looking after the objectives of eight countries located within and having adverse interest on how the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) fare ecologically, environmentally and socially. Its initiatives on Resilient Mountain Solutions cover the countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, China and Myanmar.
The Hindu Kush Himalaya covers a massive 3,500 kilometers, spanning majestically from Afghanistan to Myanmar and China, and forming a natural barrier between the Tibetan Plateau and the Indian Subcontinent. The HKH mountain system is vital for food, water and power security for nearly two billion human populations in the eight countries it nourishes. The HKH system is also critical to impacts of the triple planetary crises – global warming, climate change and extreme weather events.
The first morning rays of the month of May saw a team of officials and journalists affiliated with the Directorate of Environment and Climate Change, Manipur, landing in the heart of the mountainous setting of Nepal to take stock of the activities of ICIMOD with particular interest on its springshed management in the Himalaya.
The State’s Directorate of Environment has a running field project for springshed rejuvenation and management in the uplands of Lunghar village in Ukhrul District. The core focus is on reviving the staggering springsheds in the village vicinity to address the vital aspect of human need – water: The Elixir of Life.
That precisely is what ICIMOD is out to do in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, secure the springsheds to ensure water security and thereto enhance the climate resilience in the face of the increasingly worry on water woes with climate change impacts casting its shadow over the planet.
As ICIMOD notes based on a report of the NITI Aayog published in 2018, up to 50 percent of springs in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) have either considerably dried up or are in critical stages of reduction in their discharge. This, of course, is equally visible in many of the springs in the mountainous terrain of Manipur.
For that matter, whosoever are concerned on water issues – be it an international organization like ICIMOD or a state functionary like the Directorate of Environment & Climate Change, the focus is on the drying up of springs which can be interpreted on the worry of rivers and feeder streams drying up steadily or increasingly losing their environmental flow with every succeeding year.
This can further be translated to millions of people threatened with water insecurity – read as water scarcity – in the immediate and in long term measures. Manipur in recent years has seen increased instances of rivers flowing at low ebb, with some almost turning into pools especially in the lean season, and this had caused widespread worry on crop failures and the lack of potable water for the urban population.
ICIMOD’s fundamental objective is in promoting science based, and socially inclusive, springshed management approaches with community-based solutions to ‘build resilience against climate change implications’ that obviously could threaten the water needs of millions of people living within the expanse of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, both in the upper reaches and further down in the foothills and the river floodplains.
ICIMOD’s outstation field research station reflects its core objective of springs rejuvenation based on a multi-disciplinary springshed management approach, conducive of the application of local knowledge and wisdom infused with the principles of science. This was as explained by Samuel Thomas, Senior Communication Officer at ICIMOD, who led a tour of the campus hosting a wide diversity of herbs, shrubs, trees, and animals resonant with the IHR.
The Living Mountain Lab has a mini-model of the risk analysis of glacial lake outburst scenario where sudden outburst of glacial lakes can cause extensive damages to infrastructures and human settlements downstream.
Supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Switzerland, ICIMOD’s work is part of its Strengthening State Strategies for Climate Action (SCA) under a broad Strengthening Climate Change Adaptation in Himalayas (SCA-Himalayas) project. It partners with the Advanced Center for Water Resource Development and Management (ACWADAM) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee to achieve the set goals.
In its present activity, ICIMOD has four action research sites, one each in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the western part of the IHR, and Sikkim and Manipur in the eastern part of the IHR. For Manipur, its activities are focused on the revival of springs in Lunghar village, for which Manipur’s Directorate of Environment has tied up with the local community to achieve the primary objective of securing the water sources to address climate adaptation measures at the local level and to ensure livelihood security for the local population.
The ground-truthing is based on spring discharge assessment using flumes, with water sensors installed to measure the spring water discharge fluxes and an automatic weather station to record the weather patterns in that particular watershed covering the multiple Lunghar village springsheds as in Manipur’s case.
A recent visit to the Lunghar village springshed by a team of journalists based in Ukhrul revealed the success, however limited, where the local community had worked to bring back the water flow through a series of interventions in aided regeneration of the forest cover in the springsheds and construction of vegetative check dams to check silt load outflow and storage of water along the stream flow.
For the uninitiated, the terminology ‘springshed’ implies a set of watersheds and aquifers that integrate into a system which supplies water to a group of springs. Springsheds usually cover the upper reaches of uplands, but springs can be found almost anywhere – the ridges, slopes, foothills. Precipitation in good amount in the watersheds is vital to recharge the springs and the aquifers, and this can be achieved through restoration of forest cover.
In pursuance with ICIMOD’s objectives, the Manipur team emphasized on more field-based interactive exchange programs to learn and understand explicitly on the significance of springsheds in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 3, 10, 13 and 15.