Our speaker this week was Soni Pradnahang, professor of Geosciences at URI. She spoke about the challenges of water management in her native country. This was a fascinating and highly relevant presentation, especially in lightof the recent catastrophic floods in Nepal.
Nepal has Tibet to the north and India on the south. The gradient in Nepal is astounding with Everest to the north and lowlands to the south. Monsoons cause some flooding on an annual cycle, but the glacier flooding disaster this year killed 1455 people with 5295 still missing. Soni lost relatives in the disaster as whole villages were wiped out. The blame is shared by climate change and the geopolitics of water management among neighboring countries. In this case, critical dams that are managed by China and India and the warning systems associated with malfunctioning flood gates, led to a collapse and breach of a dam that resulted in catastrophic flooding and mudslides.
This is just one of the challenges that countries are faced with as climate change impacts the intensity of normal weather cycles. Diversion of water resources not only affects the livelyhoods of farmers, fisherman but also impacts the control and distribution of hydroelectric power between nations. Although natural catastrophies such as this are not always preventable, there is much work that needs to be done to scale up the early warning systems and mitigate the impact of these events. Distribution of aid to those most in need and relocating displaced villagers are issues that were inadequately addressed.
