Every year, we have about 76 disasters in the Himalayas, some 36,000 people are killed and over a million affected by disasters. The loss of life and damage does not need to occur. How people manage the situation can relieve the situation much better.
About a third of these disasters are from floods. In the Himalaya, there are two broad kinds of flooding:
The mountains, and the rivers coming from the mountains, typically cross national boundaries. Big riverine floods are very often transboundary floods. This is true also of many flash floods as well. Only about 10% of floods are transboundary in nature, they displace 60% of people . Right now, there is a lack of exchange of real time data. We have some bilateral agreements and treaties, but there's a door open for much more regional cooperation in floods.
Rather than living with floods, we have decided that dykes are the way to go. If well maintained and managed, it's an effective measure. But if you don't maintain and repair dykes then even with a moderate rise in water levels, we have huge floods like the devastating Kosi Barrage flood. The message here is that better maintenance, better planning, perhaps even better ways of thinking through flooding really makes a difference.
From previous floods, we have learnt that we do have huge data gaps. We are missing those communication systems that could really help us out. We can do better at flood infrastructure and planning. There is a need for transboundary cooperation to deal with many of these flood events.
It is possible to build these kind of end-to-end systems. I think that it is possible, and we need to link science with government and communities. We can do much better with our infrastructure planning and management. We have come a long way with transboundary information systems and really do much better with cooperation.
So the message is, there are floods and there are disasters. Let us make the next one, the next flooding event, something that is not so big a disaster by working together on this.
This post is an extract of a speech made by David Molden, Director General of International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), at the Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) held at Nagaland in September 2013.