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GS Paper: GS3-19.Disaster and Disaster Management.

  • Lessons India, China, and Nepal must learn

    Lessons India, China, and Nepal must learn

    Why in the News

    A catastrophic flood in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, triggered by a glacial collapse near Langtang Lirung, has exposed vulnerabilities in Himalayan border management, infrastructure, disaster response and regional climate cooperation.

    Why does a border not contain a Himalayan disaster?

    1. A natural disaster does not recognise the line: The border as a geometric line, whose breach by another sovereign nation is treated as the uppermost national security concern, is not respected by a flood or an avalanche.
    2. Dependence-generating diplomacy no longer works: Nation states cannot afford to treat the sharing of information and expertise as a favour extended by one side to the other.
    3. Interdependence is the operating requirement: Data sharing, joint studies, institutional collaboration, non-sovereignty-centric treatment of climate change impact and a close inter-governmental early warning framework have become central.
    4. Science has to be converted into a public good: Translating findings into simple public awareness material is part of the same task.
    5. Border forces face a different threat set: Border defence personnel need retraining for security threats that now arrive as physical hazards rather than as incursions.
    6. Traditional knowledge belongs in operations: Human security in far-flung terrain depends on drawing on local knowledge in response operations rather than on external protocols alone.

    What does the flood expose in the region’s power system?

    1. Over 15 hydro projects were damaged on one river: The flood struck that many projects along the Trishuli, and the downstream exposure it created runs from national to trans-border scale.
    2. The cascade crosses four countries: Effects within Nepal, China and India, and further downstream in Bangladesh, can disrupt cross-border energy trading and regional power pools, producing energy insecurity.
    3. India’s oldest stake on the river is destroyed: India’s Central Water and Power Commission initiated the first hydel project on the Trishuli in 1953, an agreement was signed in 1958, and the 21 MW run-of-the-river project was commissioned at Tuphe in June 1972 at a cost of Rs 13.55 crore. It supplied power to Kathmandu for decades and now remains largely decimated.
    4. Highways were built along the river belts: Many China-built highways to Kathmandu run through valleys, including the 115 km Kathmandu to Kodari highway built in 1967 through the Sunkoshi valley, sited for strategic reasons and for easy access to sand and boulders.
    5. Ribbon development followed the alignment: Huge settlements have grown along those highways, which places population directly in the river’s path.
    6. Donors are reconsidering large infrastructure: This flood and others have pushed the funders of big infrastructure projects to rethink their strategies.

    Why does the response arrive from the wrong place?

    1. The first responder is the first victim: The impact falls at a very local level, where the area’s residents are both, and the response comes from distant capital-centric institutions in Kathmandu.
    2. Sikkim recorded the same pattern in 2023: Massive calving from the South Lhonak glacier’s snout triggered a glacial lake outburst flood in North Sikkim in October that year, and the Teesta rose 15 to 20 metres within hours.
    3. The damage crossed two States and a border: Downstream townships in Sikkim, West Bengal and Bangladesh were buried in slush and debris.
    4. The loss was 60 per cent of a State’s output: Damage was estimated at over Rs 25,000 crore, close to that share of Sikkim’s 2022-23 Gross State Domestic Product.
    5. Generation loss alone crossed Rs 19,000 crore: The 1,800 MW of capacity destroyed accounted for that much of the total.
    6. Local institutions had no capacity to absorb it: Municipalities and panchayats stood helpless before the scale of destruction, without training, technique, orientation, awareness, preparedness or the means to cope.
    7. No agency owned the warning function: No early warning mechanism existed, and no agency was responsible for creating one.
    8. The remedy named is relocation of capacity: National institutions and resources need to be based at the local level rather than at the capital.

    Why is there no common Himalayan climate policy?

    1. The region has no framework spanning its levels: The Himalayan region lacks a robust climate policy framework covering the local, national and regional levels together.
    2. The scientific warning is already published: The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the Kathmandu based intergovernmental knowledge centre for the Hindu Kush Himalaya, has published evidence-based reports warning of tipping points in the region’s deteriorating glaciology.
    3. India’s own instruments are national and sectoral: India has a National and State Action Plan on Climate Change with eight sectoral missions, including one for the Himalayas.
    4. The regional treaty exists on paper: The SAARC Convention on Cooperation on Environment was signed and took effect in 2013.
    5. The problem is fragmentation rather than absence: These scattered approaches have to be brought onto a common platform.

    Challenges to disaster preparedness in the Himalaya

    1. Disaster money is triggered by damage, not by risk: Spending flows overwhelmingly to relief and compensation after an event rather than to the monitoring and evacuation capacity that would reduce it. Eg. A separate National Disaster Mitigation Fund had to be created under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 precisely because response funds were not being spent on mitigation.
      The Fix: Ring-fence a fixed share of the mitigation fund for high altitude monitoring and evacuation infrastructure, with annual utilisation published State by State.
    2. Hill towns are built without a carrying capacity assessment: Settlements expand on slope debris and old landslide material without any study of how much construction the ground will bear. Eg. Land subsidence at Joshimath in January 2023 forced the evacuation of hundreds of families from a town built on old landslide debris.
      The Fix: Complete and publish carrying capacity studies for Himalayan towns, and hold new construction approvals until each town’s study is on record.
    3. No single agency owns glacier hazard: Glacier and glacial lake monitoring is split across geological, polar research and university institutions, so no body publishes a standing national risk list. Eg. India’s glacial lake inventories have been compiled separately by different agencies using different thresholds for what counts as a risk lake.
      The Fix: Designate one nodal agency to maintain and annually publish a national inventory of high risk glaciers and lakes.
    4. Reconstruction rebuilds the same exposure: Post-disaster funding restores roads, bridges and power projects on their original alignments, which returns the assets to the position that failed. Eg. Highways and hydel assets damaged in the 2013 Kedarnath floods were substantially rebuilt along the same valley routes.
      The Fix: Make a relocation-or-redesign assessment a condition of releasing post-disaster reconstruction funds for any asset in a hazard zone.
    5. Transboundary rivers carry no data obligation: Upstream flow, lake level and slope movement data are treated as strategic information rather than as a safety input owed to a downstream population. Eg. Countries in the region share river data under bilateral arrangements limited to defined seasons and defined stations.
      The Fix: Put glacier, lake and flow monitoring data into a standing regional exchange with agreed release timelines and an automatic alert threshold.

    Conclusion

    The Rasuwa flood underscores that Himalayan disasters demand cross-border cooperation, not isolated national responses. India must strengthen valley-level early warning systems, ensure real-time upstream data sharing, and establish clear institutional responsibility to prevent future disasters.

    Back2Basics: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development

    1. Formation: An intergovernmental knowledge and learning centre established in 1983, with its headquarters at Kathmandu in Nepal.
    2. Membership: It serves eight regional member countries, namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
    3. Coverage: Its mandate is the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, spanning the mountain systems from Afghanistan to Myanmar.
    4. Function: It produces regional assessments on glaciers, water, biodiversity and mountain livelihoods, including the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment reports.

    [2019, GS3, 10 marks] Disaster preparedness is the first step in any disaster management process. Explain how hazard zonation mapping will help in disaster mitigation in the case of landslides.”

  • Himalayas’ hanging glacier threat

    Himalayas’ hanging glacier threat

    Why in the News

    A Nature study identified 219 hanging glaciers in the Alaknanda basin, highlighting rising Himalayan flood risks as glacier instability assessments remain limited despite repeated major incidents.

    What is a hanging glacier?

    1. A perched ice mass: It is ice sitting on a steep slope in a position from which it can detach as a mass rather than melt away in place.
    2. Instability is defined by velocity: An unstable glacier is one whose velocity may change by an order of magnitude or more over a comparatively short period.
    3. The instability redistributes the ice: That change redistributes ice across the glacier, accompanied by geometric, structural and tectonic shifts, and the redistribution is what produces a hanging glacier on a steep slope.
    4. Detachment starts a chain rather than an event: A break-off can trigger secondary hazards such as a glacial lake outburst flood, where a lake dammed by loose moraine debris is breached and releases its water downstream.

    What did the Alaknanda inventory actually measure?

    1. 219 hanging glaciers in one basin: The study identified that number across the Alaknanda basin of the Garhwal Himalaya.
    2. The unstable ice clusters upstream: Nearly a third of it is concentrated in the Upper Alaknanda basin.
    3. The inventory carries area and volume: The glaciers cover 71.7 ± 3.5 sq km with an estimated ice volume of 2.39 ± 0.42 cubic km, including 0.74 ± 0.14 cubic km of hanging ice mass.
    4. The named driver is warming and variability: Himalayan glaciers are increasingly exhibiting geometric and dynamic instability owing to rapid warming and climate variability.
    5. The method is new to this range: Hanging glaciers have been studied extensively in the Alps, and basin scale assessments in the Himalaya remain limited.
    6. The work is Indian institutional: It was carried out by researchers at the School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar and the Divecha Centre for Climate Change at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

    What would a break-off do in the Badrinath and Mana sector?

    1. Simulated avalanche flows exceed 50 metres in height: The study’s simulations place flows above that height in that sector of Uttarakhand.
    2. Settlements sit directly in the path: A severe event on that scale would swallow major settlements and infrastructure.
    3. The exposed population is seasonal as well as resident: Badrinath is one of the Char Dham shrines and Mana sits at the head of the same route, so footfall peaks in the months when the slopes are least stable.

    Why is exposure rising faster than the ice is failing?

    1. Built exposure more than doubles by 2030: Buildings and infrastructure land area at risk in the basin is projected to be 120 per cent higher in 2030 than in 2000.
    2. The exposed population rises by 17 per cent: The number of people living in those at-risk areas is projected to surge by that share.
    3. Identification and monitoring are the first response: Systematic identification and monitoring of high-risk glaciers is what the study calls for to reduce downstream hazard.
    4. Land-use planning is the second half of it: Risk-informed land-use planning has to run alongside monitoring in mountain regions.
    5. Monitoring is cheap against the loss it prevents: Much greater funding of monitoring programmes is required, and that funding is small compared with the cost of lost lives and livelihoods, per the Director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.

    What separated Chamoli from Blatten?

    1. Chamoli killed over 200 people in 2021: A massive wall of ice and rock collapsed into the Rishiganga valley, destroying hydropower plants and sweeping away bridges.
    2. Blatten killed one person: A large ice-rock avalanche buried most of that Swiss village four years later.
    3. The difference was preparedness, not luck: A second study published in Nature in March attributes the survival to preparedness, monitoring and rapid response.
    4. Precursory signs were acted on: Authorities and residents in Blatten responded to signs of slope instability, which enabled a timely evacuation.
    5. The hazards are cascading rather than isolated: These events should be treated as cascading hazards rather than as separate landslides, avalanches or floods, per the head of planetary sciences at the University of Aberdeen’s School of Geosciences.
    6. Attribution should not be rushed during the emergency: Establishing which process caused an event should not be hurried during the immediate emergency response.

    Challenges to monitoring hanging glaciers in the Himalaya

    1. The instrument network is sparse and seasonal: High altitude weather and movement sensors are few and go offline through winter, so precursor slope movement is unobserved in the months it develops. Eg. Glacier mass balance in India is measured on a handful of benchmark glaciers such as Gangotri and Chhota Shigri rather than basin wide.
      The Fix: Fund a permanently telemetered high altitude sensor network, with satellite radar interferometry as the standing backup layer.
    2. A hazard map does not bind a builder: Slope and glacier instability assessments are advisory inputs, so they do not stop an approval for a road or a power project below an unstable face. Eg. Construction continued in the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga valleys after repeated warnings about instability in those catchments.
      The Fix: Make valley level hazard zonation a statutory input to environmental clearance for any project above a set altitude.
    3. Warning does not reach the valley floor: An identified hazard produces a scientific alert rather than a siren in the settlement that would be hit. Eg. Workers at downstream barrage sites in the 2021 Chamoli event had no alert before the flood wave arrived.
      The Fix: Install siren based valley warning tied to the sensor network, with a mandated evacuation drill calendar for every downstream settlement and project.
    4. Pilgrim traffic concentrates people in the exposed months: The season when the route is open is the season when avalanche and outburst risk is highest, so peak exposure and peak hazard coincide. Eg. Char Dham footfall peaks between May and October, which is also the melt and monsoon window.
      The Fix: Route daily pilgrim entry against a published hazard advisory rather than against a fixed carrying capacity number alone.

    Conclusion

    The hanging glacier threat shows that Himalayan disaster risk is becoming a race between environmental instability and expanding human exposure. Continuous monitoring, enforceable hazard zoning, real-time warnings and evacuation preparedness can turn scientific knowledge into lives saved and resilient mountain development.

    Back2Basics: Alaknanda River

    1. Source: It rises at the Satopanth and Bhagirath Kharak glaciers in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand.
    2. Status in the Ganga system: It is one of the two headstreams of the Ganga, and it carries the larger discharge of the two at their meeting point.
    3. Panch Prayag: Its five confluences are Vishnuprayag, Nandprayag, Karnaprayag, Rudraprayag and Devprayag.
    4. Formation of the Ganga: It joins the Bhagirathi at Devprayag, and the river takes the name Ganga from that point onward.

    [2020, GS1, 10 marks] How will the melting of Himalayan glaciers have a far-reaching impact on the water resources of India?

  • The mountains have sounded a warning, we ignore it at our peril

    The mountains have sounded a warning, we ignore it at our peril

    Why in the News

    Flash floods have swept down from the mountains on the Nepal Tibet border into Nepal’s Rasuwa district. A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) sent a massive avalanche of water and mud down the Lhende River about 20 km east of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing, sweeping away villages, settlements and a large number of people downstream. The avalanche may have been triggered by a 4.4 magnitude earthquake recorded in the area minutes earlier. At least six hydropower projects downstream were destroyed, costing Nepal 405 MW of capacity, which is 12 per cent of its national total. The tension is that the Himalaya has produced this exact sequence repeatedly, and hydropower schemes and hill tourism have expanded on the same valleys after each event. A second front has opened across the border, where China is building the Medog dam at the great bend of the Brahmaputra and hydrological information sharing with India has never been regular.

    What is a glacial lake outburst flood?

    1. How the lake forms: A mountain river upstream is blocked by a portion of a glacier breaking away or by an avalanche. The blockage impounds a lake behind it.
    2. How the lake bursts: The loose banks of that lake give way under water pressure, and a huge volume of water and debris then hurtles downstream through narrow valleys.

    What did the flood take out beyond the power projects?

    1. The path of the surge: The floods spread south from Rasuwa into the Dhading, Gorkha and Nuwakot districts of Nepal, and the impact carries across the border into India. Chinese media reported similar loss of life and property on the Tibetan side, in Gyirong county.
    2. Indian pilgrims caught in it: Over 160 Indian pilgrims are reported missing. The hotels and guest houses they were staying in were washed away in the flood.
    3. A trade and pilgrimage artery closed: Rasuwagadhi is the most important border crossing between Nepal and Tibet for trade and for tourism, including pilgrim tours to Kailash Mansarovar. Cross border trade and traffic are likely to remain suspended for the foreseeable future.
    4. The recovery horizon: Rebuilding the lost generating capacity may take several years, and it is a loss Nepal can ill afford.
    5. India’s immediate response: India sent urgent medical and food supplies to Nepal. It also despatched specialised rescue teams.

    How large is the hazard the Himalaya now carries?

    1. Glacier area: There are 48,000 sq km of glaciers spread over the Himalaya, and another 18,000 sq km sit in the Karakoram.
    2. Mapped lakes: Researchers have mapped over 5,000 glacial lakes in the Himalaya. About 500 of them are classified as hazardous or significantly hazardous.
    3. Recorded events: There have been at least 388 recorded GLOF instances in the Himalaya Karakoram mountains, and their frequency has been increasing in recent years.
    4. What these glaciers support: Himalayan glaciers are the source of the rivers that sustain the entire Indo-Gangetic plain, which is populated by over 500 million people.

    Why has the record of past disasters not changed construction in the valleys?

    1. Dharali, August 2025: A GLOF event at Dharali in Uttarakhand, on the route to Gangotri, caused large scale loss of life and property.
    2. Kedarnath, 2013: The Kedarnath flash flood was caused by a combination of torrential rains and a GLOF at Chorabari lake to the north. The surge of flood waters and debris washed away towns and settlements along the highway to Gangotri.
    3. The rules that followed it: There was talk of assessing and strictly observing the human carrying capacity of these remote pilgrimage places. No construction within 500 metres of the river banks was to be permitted thereafter.
    4. What actually happened: Hotels and guest houses have mushroomed once again on the river banks. No lessons have been learnt from the earlier event.
    5. The load on the shrine towns: During the pilgrimage season Kedarnath may see a daily turnover of 15,000 to 20,000 pilgrims.
    6. Construction at extreme altitude: Prefabricated guest houses, restaurants and dhabas operate even at 18,000 feet, with gas cylinders transported back and forth for heating and cooking. There are no proper arrangements for waste management.
    7. The direction policy is moving in: The Uttarakhand government is reportedly considering opening Badrinath and Kedarnath for pilgrimage the whole year round.

    What has hydropower already lost to these events?

    1. Teesta-III, October 2023: A GLOF from South Lhonak lake in Sikkim completely washed away the 1200 MW Teesta-III hydropower dam and power station.
    2. Rishiganga, 2021: A sudden flash flood triggered by a glacial collapse in Chamoli in Uttarakhand wiped out the Rishiganga hydropower project. It also blocked the associated Chamoli tunnel.
    3. The seismic overlay: Hydropower development continues apace in the Himalaya, which is a known active seismic zone, so the outburst risk and the earthquake risk compound each other.
    4. The response to the evidence: Major hydropower projects continue to be pursued across the mountain zone, creating mounting risks to life and property, and those risks are being cynically ignored.

    Why is the Medog dam a transboundary risk for India?

    1. Scale of the project: China has begun constructing the gigantic Medog dam at the great bend of the Brahmaputra river just across the border. It is slated to deliver 300 billion kWh of power annually.
    2. How large that is: The largest hydro project in existence anywhere in the world, the Gezhouba on the Yangzi River, is rated at 15.6 billion kWh of power annually.
    3. The fault line under it: Chinese scientists have warned that the project sits very close to the Paizhen Fault, a major fracture in the Earth’s crust, which makes it vulnerable to seismic events. A major earthquake in the project vicinity could send a massive discharge of flood waters and debris into India’s Northeast.
    4. The information gap: The sharing of information and early warning between India and China has never been regular. It has been subject to the state of their political relations.
    5. The wider river geography: Several rivers rise on the Tibetan plateau and flow through Nepal and India. Flash floods on some of these cross border rivers have already caused large scale damage on the Indian side.

    Challenges to GLOF risk management in the Himalaya

    1. Warning systems are built for the wrong signal: A system designed to track the gradual movement of glacial water cannot register a sudden wall of debris. Eg. The Bhote Koshi warning system did not detect the surge that hit Rasuwa. Fix. Pair water level gauges with seismic and acoustic sensors that read mass movement rather than a change in river stage.
    2. A hazard rating triggers no building restriction: Classifying a lake as hazardous carries no automatic consequence for what may be built below it. Eg. A 2021 study by scientists from IIT Roorkee, IISc Bengaluru and the universities of Dayton, Graz, Zurich and Geneva flagged instability around South Lhonak lake, and the lake burst two years later killing at least 50 people. Fix. Attach a mandatory downstream no build corridor to every lake a national risk index rates as high.
    3. Clearance is granted one project at a time: A chain of dams on the same river is appraised as separate schemes, so the cumulative surge risk down the valley is never assessed. Eg. The Alaknanda and Bhagirathi basins in Uttarakhand carry dozens of projects on hydrologically connected rivers. Fix. Require a basin level cumulative impact assessment before any new project is cleared in an outburst exposed valley.
    4. Monitoring authority is split across agencies: Glacier survey, weather forecasting and dam safety sit with different bodies, so no single office can order action on a lake that is filling. Eg. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has itself proposed an integrated glacier monitoring authority coordinating the Geological Survey of India, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Indian Space Research Organisation. Fix. Create that authority and give it the power to direct downstream evacuation.
    5. Nothing tests a dam that is already built: Outburst assessments became mandatory for new dams only after the Sikkim event, and existing designs are under review rather than under obligation. Eg. The requirement followed the loss of a 1200 MW station rather than preceding it. Fix. Set a dated deadline for retrofitting or de-rating existing Himalayan dams that fail a surge simulation.

    Conclusion

    The hazard sits in one country and the damage arrives in another. No amount of engineering on the Indian side changes that. What India can change is its access to upstream data, which at present moves when relations are warm and stops when they are not. The marker to watch is whether the Medog construction timetable comes with a year round data sharing commitment, because that data is the only warning the Northeast would get.

    Disaster Risk Reduction in India

    1. What it covers: Disaster risk reduction cuts exposure and vulnerability through prevention, mitigation and preparedness, rather than through relief paid after an event.
    2. Who runs it: The Ministry of Home Affairs coordinates disaster management through its Disaster Management Division. Response is primarily a State government responsibility.
    3. The four fund pillars: The National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) finance relief. The National and State Disaster Mitigation Funds (NDMF and SDMF) finance risk reduction projects alone.
    4. Scale of the commitment: The Fifteenth Finance Commission allocated Rs 2.28 lakh crore for 2021 to 2026 across preparedness, mitigation, response and reconstruction.

    Laws and Rules Governing Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. Disaster Management Act, 2005: Establishes structures and processes at the national, State, district and local levels.
    2. Authorities created: The NDMA chaired by the Prime Minister, State Disaster Management Authorities chaired by the Chief Minister, and District Disaster Management Authorities headed by the District Collector.
    3. Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025: Modernises the 2005 framework for urban risk, climate extremes and data driven response.
    4. Urban Disaster Management Authorities: States may set up city specific authorities in State capitals and municipal corporation cities.
    5. Statutory databases: National and State disaster databases covering risk assessments, mitigation plans and real time data are now mandated.
    6. Plan ownership shifts: The NDMA and State authorities now prepare the disaster plans, earlier a task of the National and State Executive Committees.

    Government Initiatives for Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. National GLOF Risk Mitigation Project: A Rs 150 crore project covering Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Uttarakhand.
    2. Central Water Commission lake monitoring: The Commission monitors 902 glacial lakes and has a Risk Indexing Framework to prioritise high risk ones.
    3. Common Alerting Protocol based Integrated Alert System: A Rs 354.83 crore project delivering geo-targeted warnings through SMS, television, radio, sirens and satellites.
    4. Mission Mausam (2024 to 2026): Strengthens weather forecasting and multi-hazard early warning, including for outburst related risks.

    Key Facts about Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015 to 2030): The global blueprint adopted at Sendai in Japan, carrying four priorities and seven global targets.
    2. The United Nations custodian: The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction anchors the agenda and runs the Sendai Framework Monitor.

    Challenges in Disaster Risk Reduction

    1. Mitigation stays funded far below response: The roughly 80:20 tilt in the fund architecture privileges relief spending over prevention. Eg. Under the mitigation fund in 2025-26 the High Level Committee approved Rs 507.37 crore for panchayat led community risk reduction, a fraction of what response draws. Fix. Set a floor share of the disaster corpus spendable only on early warning, retrofitting and nature based solutions.
    2. India’s deadliest hazards are not notified disasters: Heatwaves and lightning sit outside the notified list, so States cannot draw relief for deaths from them. Eg. The Centre has not accepted the Sixteenth Finance Commission recommendation to notify them. Fix. Notify both with an IMD linked declaration trigger and a stated compensation protocol.
    3. The urban authority created in 2025 barely exists: City specific authorities are a State mandate, and only one State has set one up. Eg. Karnataka constituted an urban authority for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike. Fix. Fund the rollout centrally and fix a clear interface with the municipal corporation.
    4. The local tier remains under-empowered: Panchayats and urban local bodies are the first responders yet hold neither trained staff nor untied funds. Eg. The Aapda Mitra volunteer scheme trains community responders but reaches a small share of vulnerable districts. Fix. Route a fixed share of the mitigation fund to the local body with a training and equipment condition.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS3, 15 marks] What is disaster resilience? How is it determined? Describe various elements of a resilience framework. Also mention the global targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).”

  • A Himalayan tragedy

    Why in the News

    Scientists investigating the flash flood on the Bhotekoshi river in Nepal have attributed it to a sturzstrom, a high speed rock and ice avalanche near Langtang Lirung on the Nepal China border, rather than to a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). The reattribution matters because a flood on the same river in July of the previous year, which also occurred without rainfall, was concluded to be a glacial lake outburst flood, and that conclusion shaped what was being watched for. The flood struck at around 8.40 a.m. and has left more than 600 dead and close to 2,500 missing, including foreign nationals, mostly from India. What is now contested is whether a monitoring and warning system built around glacial lakes can see a hazard that begins as a bedrock and ice collapse.

    What is a sturzstrom?

    1. The definition: A massive rock avalanche in which a large volume of rock suddenly collapses and travels at extremely high speed over a long distance.
    2. Its high mountain form: Where the collapsing rock is mixed with ice, snow, firn and frozen soil, the same event is described as a rock and ice avalanche.
    3. Why the runout is so long: Pressure and friction inside the moving mass generate meltwater, which lubricates the mass and its base, reduces resistance and carries the debris much further than a dry rockslide would.
    4. How it ends: As it descends it takes in more ice, snow, rock, soil and water, and can transform into a massive debris flow before depositing its material.

    Why was the glacial lake explanation set aside?

    1. The precedent pointed the other way: A rainless flood on the Bhotekoshi in July of the previous year was concluded by scientists to be associated with a glacial lake outburst flood, so that was the first hypothesis tested.
    2. The velocity did not fit: The speed and ferocity of this flood, which washed away villages across three districts, Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading, prompted experts to examine it from a different angle.
    3. The onset signature differs: A lake breach releases a stored volume over a measurable period, while this flood arrived with no such build up recorded at downstream gauges.
    4. It has no Nepali precedent: No comparable disaster involving a sturzstrom had been recorded in Nepal before this event.

    What does the transboundary geography add to the problem?

    1. The source area straddles the border: Nepalese and Chinese authorities have concluded that the source lay in the Langtang Lirung area, and identifying the exact collapse point and which side of the boundary it sat on may not be possible.
    2. The trigger was a compound event: Satellite imagery shared by the Chinese side pointed to a combination of an ice avalanche, permafrost movement and a rockslide, with the rockslide on the Chinese side and its impact extending into Nepal.
    3. The avalanche began in Nepal: A senior divisional hydrologist at Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology states the avalanche originated on Nepalese territory very close to the boundary and induced flooding that crossed into China, damaging both sides.
    4. The channel is itself transboundary: The location identified is the Lhende Khola, a high altitude river rising in Gyirong County in Tibet and flowing south into Nepal as a tributary of the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli systems.
    5. The corridor carries trade and pilgrims: Rasuwagadhi in Rasuwa is the checkpoint through which most of Nepal’s trade with China passes, and from May to September hundreds of pilgrims cross there into Tibet for the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, with Indians the largest share.

    How far did early warning and climate attribution actually get?

    1. The systems worked and still failed: Experts state that early warning systems were activated as intended but were rendered ineffective by the speed of the flood.
    2. The structural difficulty is the terrain: The head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has said the event again showed how fragile mountain ecosystems are and how hard it is to build early warning in mountain environments.
    3. Attribution stops short of a direct link: Scientists have not ruled out a role for climate change and point to rising temperatures warming the Himalayas and accelerating glacier melt, without directly linking this disaster to global warming.
    4. Access is limiting the assessment itself: The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) reports that remoteness combined with damaged infrastructure is obstructing both damage assessment and the delivery of assistance, with around 93,000 people estimated to be affected.

    What does the 2021 Chamoli comparison establish?

    1. The mechanism has an Indian precedent: The 2021 Chamoli disaster in Uttarakhand began with a bedrock failure beneath a glacier, which triggered a rock and ice avalanche that transformed into a debris flow and flood.
    2. It is described the same way in the literature: Chamoli has been scientifically described as a rock and ice avalanche and, in some literature, explicitly as a sturzstrom.
    3. The scale of material involved: Research found that more than 25 million cubic metres of rock and ice broke loose high in the Uttarakhand Himalaya before moving rapidly downstream.
    4. The comparison narrows the watch list: Two events of the same mechanism a few years apart in the same mountain system establish an unstable rock and ice slope, not only a moraine dammed lake, as a recurring source of catastrophic flooding.

    Challenges to early warning in high mountain catchments

    1. The monitored hazard is the wrong hazard: Warning networks in the Himalaya are built around glacial lake inventories and lake level telemetry, which observe nothing at an unstable rock and ice face. Eg. Nepal’s national hazard inventories catalogue glacial lakes by area and moraine condition, with no equivalent register of unstable rock and ice faces. Fix. Add slope stability and permafrost monitoring at identified rock and ice faces to the existing glacial lake inventories.
    2. Lead time collapses to minutes: A sturzstrom accelerates and reaches settlements in the time a lake outburst would take to build, so a warning chain designed for hours has nothing to work with. Eg. Riverside towns such as Betrawati in Nuwakot were buried on the same morning the collapse occurred. Fix. Move from advisory dissemination to automatic siren triggering at gauge stations, removing the human decision step from the chain.
    3. The hazard does not respect the border: The collapse zone straddles the Nepal China boundary, so neither state’s monitoring network alone observes the full source area. Eg. The trigger was established only from satellite imagery shared by the Chinese side. Fix. Put the Lhende Khola and comparable transboundary catchments under a standing data sharing arrangement with agreed real time thresholds.
    4. Exposure is concentrated in the valley floor: Trade routes, hydropower works, bazaars and pilgrimage traffic all occupy the same narrow corridor a debris flow uses. Eg. The Rasuwagadhi corridor carries most of Nepal’s China trade and the seasonal Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage. Fix. Apply a debris flow runout based building line along these corridors rather than a flood return period line drawn from rainfall records.
    5. Assessment capacity fails exactly when it is needed: Remote terrain and destroyed access mean the size of the disaster is unknown for weeks, which delays both relief and reconstruction decisions. Eg. Officials state the full scale of damage may take weeks or months to assess. Fix. Pre position aerial survey and satellite tasking agreements so a post event damage assessment does not depend on ground access.

    Conclusion

    The scientific account of this flood has moved from a glacial lake outburst to a sturzstrom originating on an unstable rock and ice slope near the Nepal China border. That shift changes what has to be monitored, since a lake inventory does not observe a bedrock face, and it places the source area inside a boundary zone neither country monitors alone. Search and rescue continues with more than 15,000 personnel deployed. The next milestone is the joint Nepalese and Chinese determination of the exact collapse point, which will decide whether transboundary monitoring of that catchment is put in place.

    Back2Basics: Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF)

    1. What it is: The sudden release of water held in a glacial lake, which sends a large volume downstream in a short period.
    2. How the lake forms: Meltwater collects behind a moraine ridge or an ice dam left by a retreating glacier, so the impounding structure is loose debris or ice rather than rock.
    3. What breaches it: Overtopping by an avalanche or landslide into the lake, seepage that erodes the moraine from within, or failure of the ice dam itself.
    4. Why it is tracked in the Himalaya: Glacier retreat is adding to both the number and the volume of these lakes, which is why national inventories monitor them and why they were the first explanation tested for this flood.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2021, GS1, 10 marks] Differentiate the causes of landslides in the Himalayan region and Western Ghats. (150 words) हिमालय क्षेत्र तथा पश्चिमी घाटों में भू-स्खलनों के विभिन्न कारणों का अंतर स्पष्ट कीजिए। (150 शब्दों में उत्तर दीजिए)”

  • Behind Nepal floods, rising risk of glacier collapse (Explainer)

    Behind Nepal floods, rising risk of glacier collapse (Explainer)

    Why in the News

    Flash floods that swept through parts of Nepal and Tibet this week followed a glacial collapse in the Himalayas. The collapse sent a mass of ice and rock debris into the Lhende Khola and Bhote Koshi river system, and this debris reached inhabited valleys downstream. Glaciologists say such collapses are becoming more frequent because of faster warming in the Himalayas, and disaster planning for hydropower siting and early warning has not kept pace with this rising risk.

    What is a glacial collapse?

    1. Sudden mass failure of a glacier: A glacial collapse is the sudden detachment of a large mass of ice, rock and water from a glacier resting on a steep mountain slope.
    2. Triggered by geological and physical factors: Earthquakes, temperature changes and other physical changes unfolding within a glacier can trigger a collapse.

    How does a glacier’s own structure fail under stress?

    1. Formation builds a heavy, moving mass: Snow that survives several melting seasons compresses into firn (a granular midpoint stage between fresh snow and glacial ice) before recrystallising into the solid ice of a glacier.
    2. Gradient driven flow creates fracturing stress: Once a glacial mass is heavy enough it flows outward along the mountain gradient. This acceleration creates stress that exceeds the strength of the ice, and sustained movement eventually fractures it.
    3. Surface melting weakens the ice from within: Meltwater pools inside surface cracks over repeated freeze and thaw cycles. This repeated pressure eventually splits the ice all the way through.

    Why do wet base glaciers in the Himalayas pose a distinct collapse risk?

    1. Soft beds trap and channel meltwater: Where a glacier rests on soft mud or clay, trapped water moves through networks of cracks within the ice and travels toward the base.
    2. Subglacial tunnels concentrate large volumes of water: In wet base Himalayan glaciers, water collects at the base in large quantities and is occasionally connected by tunnels, so a collapse can release a concentrated volume of water at once.

    Why can a single glacial collapse trigger a second wave of flooding?

    1. Debris blocks the river before it breaks free: Collapsed ice and rock piles can block narrow river channels and form temporary natural dams downstream.
    2. A dam break repeats the flood: When such a temporary dam breaks under continuous pressure, it unleashes a second round of flooding, as happened in Nepal this week.

    Challenges to managing glacial collapse risk

    1. Rising baseline risk from faster warming: The incidence of glacier breakages in the Himalayas has increased because the region is warming faster than the global average. Eg. This week’s Nepal and Tibet collapse and debris flow into the Lhende Khola and Bhote Koshi system is one instance of this rising baseline risk. Fix. Expand year round remote seismic monitoring and high altitude early warning systems across the central Himalayan glacier belt, not only at individual high risk sites.
    2. Search and rescue capacity has not kept pace: More frequent and physically more demanding glacial collapse events place a growing burden on search and rescue missions in remote high altitude terrain. Eg. Reaching debris blocked valleys along the Bhote Koshi system after this week’s floods required search teams to operate in terrain cut off by the same collapse. Fix. Pre position high altitude search and rescue teams and equipment at seasonal staging points along known glacial risk corridors before the summer melt season.
    3. Critical infrastructure remains sited in high risk zones: Hydropower plants and other critical infrastructure continue to be built in areas exposed to glacial collapse and the flooding it can trigger. Eg. Downstream hydropower installations on Himalayan rivers were damaged in the 2021 Rishiganga Dhauliganga disaster in Uttarakhand, when an upstream ice and rock avalanche triggered a sudden flash flood. Fix. Make hazard zonation for glacial collapse and outburst flood risk a mandatory clearance requirement before critical infrastructure is sited in glacier fed river valleys.
    4. Upstream glacial instability is not systematically shared across borders: Himalayan river systems cross national boundaries, but instability observed on a glacier upstream is not routinely communicated to downstream countries before a disaster strikes. Eg. This week’s collapse originated in Tibet and Nepal before its effects reached downstream valleys, showing how upstream instability in one country can affect communities in another with little warning. Fix. Establish a standing India, Nepal and China data sharing mechanism for real time glacial and river monitoring in shared Himalayan basins.

    Conclusion

    Himalayan glacial collapses are becoming more frequent as regional warming outpaces the historical baseline, and this week’s Nepal and Tibet floods are a fresh instance of that pattern. The next step for disaster managers is to convert scattered seismic monitoring and hazard mapping efforts into a standing, cross border early warning system, before the next collapse rather than after it.

  • [28th August 2026] The Hindu OpED: New-age fires

    [28th August 2026] The Hindu OpED: New-age fires

    Question (2024, GS3): “What is disaster resilience? How is it determined? Describe various elements of a resilience framework. Also mention the global targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).”
    Linkage: The lack of a “distinct safety regime” for highly vulnerable environments like ICUs represents a core gap in India’s disaster resilience framework. This question challenges candidates to describe how to move from a structural vulnerability to a resilient system using global standards like the Sendai Framework.

    Mentor Comment

    India’s fire risk profile has shifted over the past 15 years from industrial facilities, large offices and mass gatherings toward residential buildings, hotels and hospitals, with electrical fires, driven by heavier appliance use, overloaded circuits and poor maintenance, now predominant. Intensive Care Units are especially vulnerable because of their oxygen rich environments, and this month back to back fires struck neonatal Intensive Care Units in Amravati, Maharashtra, and Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh. Despite a string of near identical incidents since the 2024 Jhansi fire in which 18 newborns died, ICU fires have still not produced a single, distinct safety regime for the units most at risk.

    What happened in this month’s neonatal ICU fires?

    1. Amravati: The fire was extinguished within 30 minutes, but smoke proved fatal for three babies who were already being treated for complications, with a faulty ventilator suspected as the cause.
    2. Chhindwara: A short circuit in a warmer at the district hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit triggered a fire in which three newborns, only days old, suffered burns.

    Why should ICU fires be treated as a distinct safety category?

    1. They are sealed spaces that fill with smoke fast: Intensive Care Units are sealed compartments where smoke accumulates quickly, and in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit patients cannot evacuate on their own, making regular evacuation drills essential.
    2. A safer design already exists on paper: A best case setup includes three independent exits, with at least two allowing horizontal evacuation, automatic sprinklers, independent power lines for major equipment, oxygen cylinder supports positioned away from electrical sockets, and fire drills held every two years.

    What regulatory response has followed past ICU fires?

    1. A professional body called for mandatory certification: Following an earlier Neonatal Intensive Care Unit fire in Delhi, the National Neonatology Forum called for mandatory fire safety certification for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit equipped hospitals, regular power audits and analogue addressable alarms.
    2. A named evacuation protocol followed: The same push produced a standard evacuation protocol, now known as RACE, for Rescue, Alarm, Confine, and Extinguish or Evacuate.
    3. New national guidelines offer a starting point: The 2026 National Guidelines on Fire and Life Safety in Healthcare Facilities can serve as a starting point for building ICU and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit specific safety standards.

    What risk do post fire investigations typically miss?

    1. Electrical harmonics is a largely unaudited factor: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit equipment is packed with electronic components that draw distorted current, which can silently overheat neutral wiring, transformers and loose connections without ever tripping a circuit breaker.
    2. Generic findings may be hiding the real cause: Post fire reports that cite generic “short circuits” or “technical faults” may be missing this harmonic driven degradation entirely, leaving the underlying risk unaddressed even after an inquiry closes the case.

    Challenges to ICU fire safety

    1. Fire safety certification is not uniformly enforced: Many hospitals, particularly outside metro cities, operate without a valid fire safety no objection certificate or lapse on renewal. Eg. Investigations after major hospital fires, including the Jhansi Neonatal Intensive Care Unit fire in which 18 newborns died, have repeatedly found expired or absent fire clearances. Fix. Link a hospital’s fire safety certificate renewal to its registration and accreditation status, so a lapsed certificate automatically suspends the facility’s licence to operate.
    2. Backup power for critical equipment is often shared, not independent: Ventilators, warmers and monitors frequently run off the same power lines as general hospital load, so a single fault can cut life support equipment. Eg. A suspected equipment fault caused this month’s Amravati Neonatal Intensive Care Unit fire. Fix. Mandate a dedicated, separately fused power line for every ICU bed’s life support equipment, independent of the hospital’s general electrical circuit.
    3. Frontline staff are rarely trained for ICU specific evacuation: Evacuating patients who cannot move on their own requires drilled procedures that most hospital staff never practise. Eg. Regular ICU evacuation drills remain the exception rather than the norm even at accredited hospitals nationally. Fix. Make a biennial ICU evacuation drill, as already recommended for Neonatal Intensive Care Units, a mandatory condition of hospital accreditation across all critical care units, not only newborn wards.

    Conclusion

    ICU and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit fires have recurred at roughly the same scale and for the same reasons since the 2024 Jhansi fire, with certification calls and evacuation protocols repeatedly following each incident without preventing the next one. Treating ICU fires as a distinct safety category, backed by independent power lines, harmonics audits and enforced certification, is what remains to convert a decade of incident specific responses into a standing safety regime.

  • Echoes of past, warning for future

    Echoes of past, warning for future

    Why in the News

    A flash flood in Nepal’s Bhotekoshi Trishuli river system has killed more than 350 people, left several hundred more missing, and damaged 35 motorable bridges, 45 suspension bridges and about 40 kilometres of roads across the affected corridor, Nepalese authorities said. Satellite imagery analysed by global agencies, including the Indian Space Research Organisation, points to a glacier collapse or rock and ice avalanche in Tibet that briefly blocked the river before a sudden, destructive release downstream. An earthquake was initially suspected as the trigger, but subsequent analysis has not supported that theory. The exact sequence, whether an ice block broke away from the glacier or a lake within the glacier breached, remains contested, and the disaster is the latest in a run of Himalayan cascade events that repeated monitoring gaps have failed to prevent.

    What is a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood?

    1. About: A Glacial Lake Outburst Flood is the sudden, large scale release of water when a lake formed by a melting glacier breaches, either because a block of glacial ice or rock falls into it or because accumulated stress in its containing moraine gives way.
    2. Mechanism: The resulting wave can overtop and breach the lake’s frontal moraine, releasing water, rock and debris that erode river banks, uproot trees and trigger further landslides as it moves downstream.
    3. A related event type: A cascade can also begin without a lake, when a large block of glacial ice or rock breaks away and falls directly into a river, as is currently suspected in the Nepal disaster.

    What is understood so far about what caused the Nepal disaster?

    1. A rock and ice avalanche is the leading explanation: The event is currently understood to have been triggered by a large block of glacier breaking off in the upper reaches of the Bhotekoshi river, known as the Trishuli in its lower course, though what caused the break is not yet clear.
    2. Heavy rainfall has been ruled out: No heavy rainfall was recorded in the area, which rules out an extratropical Western Disturbance as the trigger despite north India and the Himalayan region being under its influence at the time.
    3. The earthquake reading was reclassified: The United States Geological Survey first reported a 4.4 magnitude earthquake, then revised its assessment to say the seismic signal, later corrected to 5.2 magnitude, was generated by a glacial collapse and debris flow rather than an actual earthquake.
    4. Scientists are divided on the exact mechanism: One glaciologist has pointed out that no ice blocks are visible in videos of the disaster and suggested a breach in a “supra glacial lake” (a lake that forms within a glacier rather than at its foot, increasingly common as glaciers melt under climate change) as the more likely cause, a view a former national disaster management official has echoed.

    How does the Nepal disaster compare with past Himalayan cascade disasters?

    1. Kedarnath, 2013: Unusually heavy rainfall melted the Chorabari glacier and swelled the Mandakini river, causing flash floods and landslides across Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and western Nepal that left nearly 6,000 people presumed dead, the most devastating of the four.
    2. Chamoli, 2021: A rock and ice avalanche broke away from a glacier, an estimated 27 million cubic metres of material, and fell into the Rishiganga river in Uttarakhand, killing more than 200 people.
    3. Sikkim, 2023: The collapse of nearly 14.7 million cubic metres of frozen moraine into the South Lhonak glacial lake generated a 20 metre high wave that breached the lake’s frontal moraine, releasing about 50 million cubic metres of water, eroding roughly 270 million cubic metres of sediment and triggering 45 secondary landslides that killed at least 55 people.
    4. Dharali, 2025: Days of continuous rain combined with terrain at nearly 6,900 metres above sea level triggered mudslides, debris slides and flash floods in Uttarakhand that killed at least 69 people.

    Why does the Himalayan region keep producing these cascading disasters?

    1. The ecosystem is already destabilised: A glaciologist heading a Himalayan research organisation’s Cryosphere group has described the entire Himalayan region as “out of balance” because of population pressure and climate change, with newer areas being exposed as glaciers retreat.
    2. A single trigger becomes a multi hazard chain: What begins as one event, extreme rainfall, a landslide or a lake overflow, quickly compounds into a chain reaction of bank erosion, added debris and further landslides, because the surging water in a narrow mountain valley has no way to disperse until the terrain flattens.
    3. The region is also earthquake prone: The Himalaya is among the most seismically dangerous regions in the world, and Nepal itself suffered a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in 2015, so rainfall, a landslide or seismic activity can each independently trigger a similar cascade.

    What early warning cooperation exists across the Himalayan region?

    1. Two regional mechanisms already exist: The World Meteorological Organisation’s South Asia Hydromet Forum brings together the region’s meteorological and hydrological agencies, while the South Asia Flash Flood Guidance System provides regional flood forecasting and guidance.
    2. These systems remain under scaled for the risk: Both need to be scaled up to allow greater sharing of data, forecasting expertise and early warning systems among Himalayan countries, since the current disaster crossed from Tibet into Nepal without any shared alert reaching people downstream in time.
    3. India and China share common ground despite other differences: The two countries are often aligned in climate negotiations despite their broader geopolitical disagreements, a common outlook that has not yet been converted into a shared India China Nepal early warning system for glacial and flood risk.

    Challenges to Himalayan glacier and flood monitoring

    1. The scale of what needs monitoring is enormous: The Indian Himalaya alone holds nearly 7,500 glacial lakes and about 15,000 glaciers, only some of which are tracked through remote sensing. Eg. Ground verification requires site visits that are feasible only between July and September because of terrain and weather. Fix. The National Disaster Management Authority’s National GLOF Risk Mitigation Programme, launched after the Sikkim disaster with an outlay of Rs 150 crore, is installing early warning systems at high risk glacial lakes across Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, though it currently covers only 195 lakes against thousands identified.
    2. Early warning carries its own risk of being ignored or causing panic: Forecasting a glacier collapse accurately remains extremely difficult, and a warning that proves false can be counterproductive if residents who lack alternatives choose not to move regardless. Eg. Communities living near glacial lakes have historically stayed in place through repeated flood warnings because they have nowhere else to go. Fix. Pair early warning systems with pre identified relocation sites and compensation, so a warning carries a real alternative rather than only an instruction to move.
    3. Construction in vulnerable zones continues unchecked: Dams and hydropower projects sited in glacial and flood prone terrain are consistently among the first structures destroyed in these events. Eg. A hydropower project in Sikkim was pulverised by the 2023 South Lhonak glacial lake outburst flood. Fix. Enforce construction codes that bar large dams and settlements from mapped high risk zones and require glacier health assessments before project clearance.

    Conclusion

    The exact cause of the Nepal flood is still being verified, but it fits an established pattern of Himalayan cascade disasters that recur every few years across India and Nepal. What remains unresolved is less the mechanism of any single event than the region’s continuing gaps in glacier monitoring, construction regulation in vulnerable terrain and cross border early warning, none of which past disasters have closed.

    PYQ

    [2014] “Bring out the relationship between the shrinking Himalayan glaciers and the symptoms of climate change in the Indian sub-continent.”

  • How can States use disaster funds for heatwaves?

    How can States use disaster funds for heatwaves?

    Why in the News

    The Ministry of Home Affairs told the Lok Sabha on 4 August 2026 that heatwaves and lightning have been added to India’s list of notified natural calamities, taking the list to 14 items. The change follows a recommendation of the Sixteenth Finance Commission (FC-XVI), the constitutional body under Article 280 that recommends the distribution of resources including disaster funds between the Centre and the states, and operational guidelines issued on 30 June 2026. Heatwaves are now eligible for the full State Disaster Risk Management Fund pool rather than the capped local-disaster route states previously had to use.

    What changes for states?

    1. Removal of the funding ceiling: A state could previously notify a heatwave only as a “local disaster” and draw on the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) up to a 10% annual cap, after setting its own compensation norms. Other notified disasters such as floods and cyclones faced no such ceiling. The new notification removes this asymmetry.
    2. Two distinct funding routes now available: Under the SDRF, states can fund relief and compensation for heat-related losses. Under the State Disaster Mitigation Fund (SDMF), a fund meant for longer-term risk reduction rather than immediate response, states can finance cooling shelters and early-warning systems.
    3. Scale of the fund pool: FC-XVI recommended Rs 2.04 lakh crore for state disaster funds over 2026-27 to 2030-31, about 28% more than the previous Commission’s allocation, split Rs 1.6 lakh crore to the SDRF and the rest to the SDMF. It separately recommended Rs 79,406 crore for national disaster funds that states can draw on when a disaster exceeds their own resources.

    What challenges are in the way of using the funds effectively?

    1. Uneven heat action planning: Twelve states have notified heatwaves locally, but only around 300 cities and districts across 23 heatwave-prone states have Heat Action Plans (HAPs), leaving roughly 4,800 urban local bodies and 800 districts without one. Fix. Heat-specific SDMF guidelines, still awaited, will need to be paired with the risk and vulnerability assessments already required before any project proposal.
    2. Limited technical capacity to convert plans into proposals: A 2023 review found 79% of existing HAPs asked city departments to self-fund interventions rather than costing a proposal against the new fund. Fix. States need model mitigation proposals suited to local climate and geography, since many local bodies lack the capacity to prepare fundable projects on their own.
    3. Weak loss-and-damage data: Relief payouts under the new notification will depend on accurate heat mortality and morbidity data. The Health Ministry’s surveillance system, covering over 51,000 reporting units, recorded 4,853 heatstroke cases and 20 confirmed heatstroke deaths between 1 March and 26 July, but it does not capture the wider toll from heart, lung and kidney conditions worsened by heat.

    Conclusion

    The notification closes a genuine funding gap between heat and other disasters, but the benefit depends on state capacity to plan, cost and document heat interventions. Parametric insurance, which pays out automatically once a set temperature threshold is crossed, similar to Nagaland’s existing rainfall insurance, is one fast-disbursing tool states can pair with the new fund access.

    Back2Basics: State Disaster Risk Management Fund

    1. It is the combined pool of the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF), for immediate relief and reconstruction after a disaster, and the State Disaster Mitigation Fund (SDMF), for interventions that reduce the risk of a hazard becoming a disaster.
    2. The Finance Commission fixes the inter-state distribution using a disaster risk index built from hazard frequency and intensity, exposure, vulnerability, and a state’s expenditure record in the previous Commission’s period.

    “[2024, GS3, 15 marks] What is disaster resilience? How is it determined? Describe various elements of a resilience framework. Also mention the global targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).”

  • Minister seeks fundamental shift in fight against drought

    Minister seeks fundamental shift in fight against drought

    Why in the News

    The Union Environment Minister has called for a fundamental shift in the global approach to droughts, from reactive relief to proactive, technology-enabled resilience. He made the appeal at the Ministerial Dialogue on Accelerating Drought Resilience during the 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

    What did the Minister’s statement propose?

    1. Drought is reframed as a development challenge: The Minister said drought is no longer an occasional event but a defining development challenge, citing its compounding disruptions to global water security, agricultural food systems, biodiversity, and economic stability.
    2. India’s own model was presented as a template: He highlighted India’s coordinated, multi-institutional approach integrating early warning, mitigation, relief and community resilience, where rainfall monitoring and satellite-based drought assessments trigger preparedness at the inter-ministerial and State levels.
    3. Land restoration was linked directly to water security: He called for restoring the forest before restoring the flow, underscoring India’s focus on catchment and riverscape forestry to reduce erosion, improve water retention, and recharge groundwater.
    4. The Minister called for a shift from relief to prediction: He advocated integrating predictive technologies, localised early-warning monitoring, and proactive land management policies, so vulnerable communities can anticipate and absorb environmental shocks rather than depending primarily on post-disaster relief.

    Back2Basics

    1. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD): Adopted in 1994 following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, it is one of the three Rio Conventions, alongside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
    2. It is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management. COP17, held in Mongolia under the theme “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope,” is its 17th Conference of Parties.

    Conclusion

    The Minister’s intervention at COP17 sets out India’s preparedness-first model as its negotiating position within the UNCCD process, positioning predictive, land-restoration-based resilience as the alternative to a relief-centred global response to drought.

    “[2014, GS3, 12 marks] Drought has been recognised as a disaster in view of its party expense, temporal duration, slow onset and lasting effect on various vulnerable sections. With a focus on the September 2010 guidelines from the National disaster management authority, discuss the mechanism for preparedness to deal with the El Nino and La Nina fallouts in India.”

  • Why Indian cities flood after heavy rain and overheat in summer

    Why in the News

    A 2025 amendment to Section 41A of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 has created Urban Disaster Management Authorities, a governance response to the recurring pattern of Indian cities flooding after heavy rain and overheating in summer. World Bank cost estimates on urban flood damage and a NITI Aayog assessment of the gap between master-plan provisions and their actual implementation frame the same underlying problem: cities are being planned for climate conditions they no longer experience, and the governance structures meant to close that gap have themselves lagged.

    Why do Indian cities flood after heavy rainfall?

    1. Unplanned urbanisation over natural drainage channels: Rapid, often unauthorised urban expansion has built over natural drainage channels, lakes, and wetlands that previously absorbed and carried away excess rainwater, removing the city’s own natural flood buffer.
    2. Storm-water drainage systems designed for outdated rainfall intensity: Much of urban India’s storm-water drainage infrastructure was designed decades ago for rainfall intensities lower than what cities now experience during concentrated, high-intensity rain events.
    3. Impervious surface cover reduces natural absorption: The replacement of open, permeable ground with concrete and asphalt across expanding cities means a much larger share of rainfall runs off immediately rather than being absorbed into the soil, overwhelming drainage systems built for lower runoff volumes.
    4. Fragmented civic responsibility for drainage maintenance: Responsibility for different components of urban drainage, roads, sewers, and stormwater channels, is often split across separate municipal, water-board, and public-works departments, leaving no single body accountable for the full drainage system’s maintenance.

    Why do the same cities overheat in summer?

    1. Loss of urban green cover and water bodies: The same unplanned urbanisation that removes natural drainage also removes the tree cover and water bodies that moderate local temperature, contributing to the urban heat island effect, the pattern by which built-up urban areas run measurably hotter than surrounding rural areas due to concrete and asphalt absorbing and re-radiating heat.
    2. Building density without ventilation planning: Dense, closely packed construction without adequate spacing or ventilation corridors traps heat at street level and limits the natural air movement that would otherwise help dissipate it.
    3. Overheating and flooding share the same root cause: Both problems stem from urban master plans that have not kept pace with the density and climate conditions cities actually face, meaning a plan built around outdated rainfall and temperature assumptions fails on both fronts simultaneously.

    What does the Section 41A amendment change?

    1. Creates dedicated Urban Disaster Management Authorities: The 2025 amendment to Section 41A of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 mandates the creation of Urban Disaster Management Authorities specifically for cities, distinct from the district-level disaster management authorities the original 2005 Act established.
    2. Intended to close the urban-specific governance gap: The amendment responds to the recognition that urban flooding and heat risks require a governance structure focused specifically on city-level infrastructure and planning, rather than being folded into a district authority that also covers rural areas with different risk profiles.
    3. Implementation still depends on State-level rules: Like other provisions of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, the practical functioning of Urban Disaster Management Authorities depends on rules and staffing decisions each State government must still put in place.

    What is the scale of the cost, and the implementation gap?

    1. World Bank cost estimates on urban flood damage: World Bank assessments have placed a substantial recurring economic cost on urban flood damage in India each year, covering infrastructure repair, business disruption, and health impacts, a cost that provides the economic case for investing in the governance and infrastructure fixes the amendment aims at.
    2. NITI Aayog’s master-plan implementation gap: A NITI Aayog assessment has flagged a persistent gap between what city master plans formally provide for, including drainage, green cover, and building density norms, and what is actually implemented on the ground, identifying weak enforcement rather than a lack of planning provisions as the core problem.

    Conclusion

    Urban flooding and summer overheating in Indian cities share a common origin in master plans that have not kept pace with actual urban density and climate conditions, and the 2025 Section 41A amendment creating Urban Disaster Management Authorities is a governance response to that gap. Whether the new authorities close the NITI Aayog-flagged implementation gap will depend on the staffing and enforcement powers States actually give them, not on the amendment’s existence alone.

    Back2Basics: Urban heat island effect

    1. The pattern by which densely built urban areas record measurably higher temperatures than their surrounding rural or less-developed areas, caused primarily by concrete and asphalt surfaces absorbing and re-radiating heat.
    2. Intensified by the loss of urban tree cover, water bodies, and open green space that would otherwise moderate local temperature.
    3. Compounds public health risk during heatwaves, since urban residents, especially in dense, low-income settlements with limited cooling access, face higher effective temperatures than official city-wide readings suggest.
    4. Addressed in India through urban greening and cool-roof initiatives under various city climate action plans, alongside the disaster-management governance changes covered above.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS3, 15 marks] Flooding in urban areas is an emerging climate-induced disaster. Discuss the causes of this disaster. Mention the features of two such major floods in the last two decades in India. Describe the policies and frameworks in India that aim at tackling such floods.”