Photo - essay on 'The Teesta Valley GLOF Disaster - the unheard voices' featured in Social Documentary Network.

'Social Documentary Network (SDN), founded in 2008, is a global community of documentary photographers, editors, curators, NGOs, students, journalists and others who believe in the power of visual storytelling to build understanding and appreciation for the complexities, nuances, wonders, and contradictions that abound in the world today.'

I had uploaded a photo-essay on the landslides in our region ie 'The Silent Disaster' in SDN , way back in 2011 and since then had almost forgotten about it.

A few days ago, I decided to do a story on the Teesta Valley GLOF Disaster focusing mostly on the social impact ie on individuals and communities rather than on the destruction of bridges, dams and other infrastructure.

After curating the photos, writing up captions and so on, I uploaded 17 images onto the SDN website last night which I am glad, to say have been chosen for display.
The exhibit is 'LIVE' and entitled 'The Teesta Valley GLOF disaster - the unheard voices'

The link to the SDN exhibit is here

I hope this will give the Teesta GLOF Disaster better visibility to a world wide audience.

Do have a look and kindly pass the link to others as well.
The exhibit is best viewed on a laptop in the 'Full Screen' mode.

Praful Rao
SaveTheHills
savethehills@gmail.com
9475033744

Rainfall data of the Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalayas - OCT2019

As can be seen, our region has started its descent into the long, dry months ahead, the impacts of which will undoubtedly be felt in the availability of water in the mountains which will in turn affect the water and food security of the Darjeeling - Sikkim Himalaya.
This chain of events will continue the now familiar viscous cycle of migration of youth to urban centers in search of better livelihoods and opportunities and the decline of the agriculture in our area.
There were no landslides in OCT 2019 in this area.
Regrets for not publishing rainfall of Darjeeling(Batasia) and Kurseong in the blog.

UPDATE:
Kurseong rainfall for Oct2019: 19.6mm

Praful Rao with Shreya Gurung
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalaya

SaveTheHills activity 11Dec2018: Celebrating International Mountain Day at Town Hall, Kalimpong

International Mountain Day is an annual event of Darjeeling Himalaya Initiative (state chapter of IMI)
STH is an active member of DHI


Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

STH Activity : Seminar on 'Development paradigm in the Mountains : a case study of Darjeeling and Kalimopng districts' (09Jan2018)

Referring our earlier blog
Some of the key take-aways from the seminar are :-

• Small towns and hamlets in the districts are urbanizing at a phenomenal rate, often in an unplanned manner.
• As they do so, the industries viz educational vocations, tourism, construction which are replacing traditional means of livelihood (main agro-based work) are more vulnerable to disaster.
• The study clearly showed the huge growth of human settlements and expansion of the developmental activities (such as road construction) along steep slopes or in the vicinity of landslide areas which results in a net increase of disaster risk in these regions.
• There is a need for landslide hazard zonation maps where available to be made public and easily accessible so as to incorporate this into the planning process.
• In the final analysis, there is an urgent need to better manage development activities in the mountains to reduce disaster risk.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong District,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

Mechanical extraction of water by drilling in Kalimpong : The need for caution (Interview in KalimpongTv)

Water security in the Himalayas will in the future be a humongous problem with documented information that springs which are our life line for water in the mountains, drying up at an alarming rate. Even a cursory check carried out by STH in and around Kalimpong revealed that many perennial springs had become seasonal and many seasonal ones had dried up. The reasons are many, one of them being the changing rainfall patterns which now gives us 5 months of abundant rainfall followed by almost 7 months of drought.
This in turn has led to a severe water crisis in the town with some desperate people turning to drilling for water within the Kalimpong town municipal limits.
STH along with a group of people had voiced our concerns on the drilling because:-
a. The extraction was being done without a proper study of the aquifer system and unregulated extraction of water at the crest could adversely affect downstream communities.
b. There was no mechanism in place to regulate the number of bore wells or the amount of water that could be extracted.
c. There was no word on recharging the aquifer system/springs or the need to protect recharge areas.
d. There was no word on testing the quality of water.

Kalimpong TV asked me for an interview regarding extraction of ground water in Kalimpong. The same is place below (sorry, the interview is mostly in Nepali)



Praful Rao,
Kalimpong,
Dist Darjeeling