Can Overburdened Hills Be Depopulated After Carrying Capacity Assessment?

The concept of ‘carrying capacity’ involves assessing the number of people a city/town can support with its available resources without causing any damage to the environment. It has gained a lot of attention in the aftermath of incidents of landslide in Himachal Pradesh and land subsidence in Uttarakhand this year.

More than 70 people died within a week in landslides and flash floods and buildings fell like a house of cards in Himachal Pradesh during peak monsoon in August. Overall, 367 people have died in the state in rain-related incidents since the onset of monsoon in late June this year, according to the state authorities.

In Uttarakhand, another hill state, incidents of land subsidence triggered panic among residents of Joshimath. Although land subsidence had been noticed there for decades, it became severe in January this year, forcing authorities to move the residents into temporary shelters.

Environmentalists say most of the hill stations popular with tourists have already surpassed their carrying capacity. And that is why the events of climate change are causing more damage to these areas than ever before. They demand a study is done, without delay, to understand the gravity of the situation and enable corrective measures.

“Unfortunately, to date, no such exercise has been carried out at many popular hill stations, pilgrimage sites and tourism destinations. The truth is these places are hugely burdened and almost on the brink,” says Akash Vashishtha, an environmental activist and advocate.

Vashishtha has filed a PIL in the Supreme Court, on behalf of another environmentalist, Ashok Kumar Raghav, seeking an assessment of the carrying capacity of the Indian Himalayan Region, spread across 13 states or Union territories. These are: Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Nagaland, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.

Together, these states and UTs are home to nearly 5 crore people. The Central government supported the public interest litigation and urged the court to ask the 13 states/UTs to assess their carrying capacity.

The vital question, however, is: "How far will the state governments be willing to go to decongest an over-populated hill town?”

Some experts doubt the recommendations of such a study will be implemented, saying similar attempts have failed miserably due to lack of will before. Their cynicism is not unwarranted.

Decentralised Planning

In Shimla, the capital city of Himachal Pradesh, the Society for Environment Protection and Sustainable Development (SEPSD) carried out an environmental impact assessment of its 17 green belts and came out with a report in 2015.

Set up by the National Green Tribal in 2013, SEPSD found that cutting of trees, indiscriminate tapping of natural resources and excessive use of reinforced cement concrete (RCC) had caused irreparable damage to Shimla’s ecosystem. It proposed a complete ban on all construction activities in the whole city and recommended “decentralised planning principles”, which include developing satellite towns around Shimla “after observing all desired means” to reduce the existing pressure on the natural ecosystem of the city.

Following the SEPSD report, the NGT banned all construction activities in core areas of Shimla in 2017. However, the state government prepared and notified the Draft Shimla Development Plan (SDP) that permitted construction in core areas in a regulated manner.

“Since this was in violation of the NGT ban order, the tribunal stayed the SDP in 2022. The state government challenged it in the Supreme Court and the matter is pending there,” advocate Sanjay Parikh, appearing in the matter for environmentalists, said.

Asked how realistic it is for the authorities to depopulate hill cities, Parikh said it’s “not possible” but they can minimise the damage to the environment by ensuring proper plantation, amending construction norms and preserving natural water bodies. “The problem aggravates when the state governments themselves give importance to development activities over carrying capacity.”

Prof BK Joshi, a former vice-chancellor of the Kumaon University and current honorary director of Doon Library & Research Centre, cited two instances when exercises similar to carrying capacity assessment were done in Uttarakhand. One of the studies, sponsored by the Ministry of Environment, assessed the carrying capacity of Doon Valley in 1996. Another was done for Mussoorie city in the late 90s on the direction of a Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee.

According to Joshi, the Mussoorie study said the city’s population should not exceed 46,666 in 1997, considering the limited water availability. However, the population would increase several times the city’s carrying capacity between April and July every year owing to rising tourist arrivals.

Prof Joshi, too, agrees that the whole exercise of determining the carrying capacity of a city is futile if the governments can’t curb construction activities.

Several organisations the Uttarakhand government engaged to study the Joshimath land subsidence found that not only the town has exceeded its carrying capacity but the construction norms were also widely compromised.

An investigation report by the Central Ground Water Board said hotels and homestays for tourists and Chardham Yatra pilgrims have been constructed in the sensitive spring zone, where water pressure causes groundwater to flow onto the earth’s surface. A natural process, it happens when rainwater “recharges” the aquifers and builds pressure on the ground water to emerge out of the cracks. The low-lying area where this water collects on the surface turns into a spring.

The report said construction of buildings in the spring zone obstructed the water flow. This obstruction, coupled with seismic activities, may have triggered the recent round of subsidence in Joshimath. It was first noticed in the mid-1970s.

Similarly, CSIR-Central Building Research Institute thinks there’s a need to review the principles of town planning in the hills, keeping in mind the building typology, practices, material, regulatory mechanism, and awareness among the stakeholders based on geotechnical and geo-climatic condition.

Another environmentalist, requesting anonymity, sums up the dilemma for authorities, saying it’s a good idea to assess the carrying capacity and plan ahead when a city is being built but “what will you do when it is bursting at the seams?” “Is it possible to depopulate it?” True, possibly the best that can be done now is to ban new construction and impose norms for use of sustainable material for construction that cannot be avoided.