The Mighty Mountains

Mountains are remote areas covering 52% of Asia, 36% of North America, 25% of Europe, 22% of South America, 17% of Australia, and 3% of Africa making up in total 24% of the earth’s continental surfaces (Bridges, E.M. 1990, P 260). In mountains are found the deepest river gorges, steepest hill slopes, and some of the world’s largest and most erosive rivers. Mountain ecosystems are fragile; they are susceptible to soil erosion, landslides, and loss of genetic diversity. Physical isolation has excluded the mountains and populations therein from development, resulting in political and economic marginality often resulting into socio-cultural and ethnic conflicts in many cases. Nevertheless, Mountains provide critical habitat for many species of wildlife, minerals, timber resources, and hydropower potential, besides providing dramatic scenery.

Mountain regions are significant to human activities in a variety of ways. They are home to at least 12 per cent of the world's people. A further 14 per cent live adjacent or very close to mountain areas. More than 200 million people live in mountain and upland areas. Another 1 billion people downstream are affected by mountain conditions (Centre for Environmental Education, Himalaya, 2002). About 10 per cent of the world's population depends on mountain resources (Agenda 21, Chapter 13). Well over half the global population depends on mountains for water, food, hydro-electricity, timber, and mineral resources. Up to 80 per cent of the planet's fresh surface water comes from mountains. They provide water for half of the world’s population (Price, Martin F. 2002, P 72). Indeed, the future security of the planet's growing human population rests in great measure on mountain watersheds.

With great expenditure of human energy, terraced agriculture turns steep land environments into productive cropland. Where principles of terrain evaluation have been ignored, human occupation of mountains leads to inevitable encounters with natural hazards: earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, slope failures, lightning, wildfires, high winds, and extremes of temperature and radiation. Further, human pressures on mountain resources has led to both intra and international conflicts between highland and lowland, perhaps most notably in south Asia where subsistence farmers in the Nepal Himalaya have been blamed by India and Bangladesh for flooding, sedimentation and stream channel shifting in the Ganges River Plain and Delta (Ives and Messerli 1989 P 295).

The Himalayas




Himalayan region is a term, often loosely, used by the scholars from various disciplines to demark the youngest mountain systems lying across the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. Geomorphologically, however, the great range of mountains separating Indian sub-continent along its north-central and north-eastern border, lying within geographical limits of about 26020’ and 35040’ North and 74050’ and 95040’ East are commonly referred to as Himalayas. It extends from the Indus Trench below Nanga Parbat (8,125 m) in the west to the Yarlungtsangpo-Brahmaputra gorge below Namche Barwa (7,756 m) in the east, a west-northwest to east-southeast distance of about 2,500 km and a width of varying between 220-300 Kms (Ives and Masserli, 1989, Rao and Sexena, 1994). This definition includes, politically, the independent kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, a small part of northeastern Pakistan, southern part of Tibetan Plateau in China and the northern mountain ranges of India (see Ives and Masserli, 1989). It is important to point it out here that, although part of Northeastern Pakistan, part of southern Tibetan Plateau in China and some parts of northern Assam do display the features of Himalayan geomorphology and geology their political boundaries are difficult to delineate. Further, it is important to understand that, when we talk of himalayan enviroment it encompasses not only the geological/geomorphological unit of the himalayas but a much larger entity encompassing major parts of South-Asia, and part of South-East-Asia. Geomorphologists and Physical Geographers have divided the Himalayas both latitudinally and longitudinally. Latitudinally, the Himalayas can be divided into outer himalayas, lower himalays, greater himalayas and trans-himalayas. The latitudinal divisions of the Himalayas are made on the basis of physical/geomorphic characteristics. The logitudinal divisions, on the other hand is based on the geographical aspects and diversities from West to East. The following table shows the longitudinal divisions of the Himalayas.

Longitudunal Division of the Himalayas

Longitudunal Division Sub-Division

1. Western Himalaya
a. Kashmir Himalaya
b. Punjab/Himachal Himalaya

2. Central Himalaya
a. Uttaranchal Himalaya
b. Nepal Himalaya

3. Eastern Himalaya
a. Sikkim Himalaya
b. Darjeeling Himalaya
c. Bhutan Himalaya
d. Arunachal Himalaya


*Other northeastern states of India although share the Himalayan environment do not, geologically, form its part

The Himalayas are not a single continuous chain or range of mountains but a series of more or less parallel or converging ranges intersected by numerous valleys and extensive plateaus. They are the most striking and distinctive features on the earth’s surface and effects to varying degree the climate, water resources, soil condition, biodiversity, economy and overall life and prosperity of the countries encompassed. The region provides the life-support base for over 50 million mountain people and influences the livelihoods of over 450 million people of the plains pertaining to the very densely populated areas of the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and upper and middle Jinsha Jiang (Sichuan Basin) (see Ives and Masserli, 1989, Rao and Sexena, 1994).

---------------------------------
Now, without wasting much of our time on the general discussion of Himalayas, we will start talking on various development/environment and human security issues characterising the region and its surrounding millieu in recent times. That is the sole purpose of this blog.