Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh staring at negative impacts of altered land use

Debate on degradation of environment in ecological sensitive hill terrain bound to gain momentum

After nine people lost their life in a landslip in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district, a debate surrounding the degradation of environment in this ecological sensitive hill terrain is bound to gain momentum, even as a recent study suggests that both hydropower projects and compensatory afforestation plantations, carried out in lieu of the forest land diverted for hydropower projects in the name of ‘mitigation’, have altered land-use and are negatively impacting the forest ecosystems. The study, Impacts of Hydropower Development and Compensatory Afforestation on forest ecosystems in the high Himalayas by Manshi Asher and Prakash Bhandari, environmentalists associated with the Himdhara Environment Research and Action Collective, an advocacy and research group working on issues of environmental justice and forest rights in the Himalayan region, has been recently published in ScienceDirect – Elsevier. This study conducted between 2012 and 2016 uses information from government data and ground research to examine the extent, nature and impact of forest diversion for hydropower projects in Kinnaur.