Opinion | Building Jammu and Kashmir Without Damaging Its Natural Balance

The economy rests on it: orchards, saffron fields, rivers that feed hydropower, forests that supply timber and fuel, lakes and meadows that bring visitors. When that setting weakens, livelihoods weaken with it. The past two decades have offered enough warnings for the point to be taken seriously.

The floods of September 2014 showed how costly neglect can be. The Jhelum rose above its banks, parts of Srinagar stayed under water for weeks, and the losses ran into thousands of crores. Encroachment on floodplains, the shrinking of wetlands that once absorbed excess water, and poor drainage turned a heavy rainfall event into a disaster. Many of those same pressures remain. Lakes tell a similar story. Dal Lake has lost a considerable part of its area over the decades to encroachment, sewage and weed growth, despite sustained restoration work. Wular, among the largest freshwater lakes in Asia, has suffered from siltation and reclamation along its margins. Hokersar and other wetlands that shelter migratory birds have seen their boundaries squeezed. These water bodies are more than scenery. They hold floodwater, support fisheries and recharge groundwater.

The mountains are changing too. Glaciers such as Kolahoi, which feed the Lidder, have been retreating for years, and recent winters have brought less snow to places that once received it reliably. Dry spells have left ski resorts waiting for snowfall and raised worries about spring water supply and about orchards that depend on enough cold weather during dormancy. Farmers speak of earlier flowering, unseasonal rain at harvest time and new pests.Land is another quiet concern. Farmland and orchards around Srinagar, Jammu and smaller towns are being converted to housing and commercial use at a steady pace. The saffron fields of Pampore have shrunk considerably as plots are sold for construction. Once fertile land is built over, rural incomes suffer, and so does the ground’s ability to absorb rain and recharge aquifers.

In the Jammu region the difficulties take a different form. The Tawi carries waste through the city, summers bring heat made worse by concrete and the loss of trees, and construction dust adds to poor air quality in dry months. Forest fires in the pine belts destroy habitat and the soil cover that holds slopes together. In the Kashmir Valley winter brings its own problem, as burning of wood, coal and charcoal for warmth releases smoke that cold air traps in the basin. Roads have improved connectivity and trade. The Jammu Srinagar highway has been widened and modernised, and tunnels have cut travel times. Yet slope cutting without adequate retaining structures, careless dumping of excavated material and construction in unstable stretches such as those near Ramban have contributed to landslides and closures. Engineering in the Himalaya cannot simply copy designs from the plains. Much of the region also lies in high seismic zones, which makes the quality of buildings a matter of safety and not preference.

Tourism and pilgrimage add pressure. Gulmarg, Pahalgam, Sonamarg and the routes to Amarnath and Vaishno Devi receive crowds that local systems were never designed to handle. Plastic, food waste and sewage pile up faster than they can be processed, and landfill sites around Srinagar and other towns are overstretched. Hydropower calls for similar care. The Chenab and Jhelum basins hold large potential, and the region needs both electricity and revenue. But projects built in sequence along a single river can alter flows, affect fish and sediment movement, and displace families. Assessing the cumulative effect on a basin, and not only clearing each project separately, would give a truer picture of the cost.

None of this argues against development. Residents of J&K need roads, hospitals, housing, jobs and reliable power, and many have waited a long time for them. The real question is how the work is done. Some steps are within reach. Carrying capacity studies for tourist destinations should be completed, published and enforced. If a meadow can absorb only a certain number of visitors a day, the permit system should reflect that figure. Environmental impact assessments should be conducted honestly and made public, with affected communities heard before approvals are granted and not after. Wetlands and floodplains should be mapped, formally notified and protected, and encroachments removed in a consistent and lawful way.

Waste management deserves investment equal to that given to new construction. Composting at neighbourhood level, segregation at source, sewage treatment plants that actually run, and strict enforcement of plastic rules in sensitive zones would show results within a few seasons.

Communities must be given a real role. Panchayats, urban local bodies, farmer groups and youth clubs often understand a local site better than distant planners do. Native tree plantation, river clean-ups and the protection of springs by village committees have worked in other Himalayan states and can work here. Schools and colleges can contribute by taking students to lakes, forests and glaciers instead of confining environmental studies to textbooks. The press has a part as well, by reporting on enforcement and not only on announcements. Governments change and budgets rise and fall, but a lake that has been filled in does not return, and neither does a slope once it has slid. Decisions taken now will be judged by the children who inherit the Valley and the hills of Jammu. Growth that spends the natural wealth of the region to pay for short term gain will leave them poorer. Growth that respects the terrain can keep paying for generations.

Author Mohammad Muslim is a writer from Kashmir whose work focuses on social awareness, civic responsibility, and issues of public interest. He can be reached on mdmuslimbhat@gmail.com