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Mountain Disasters

Jack Ives

The title, Mountain Disasters, is extremely broad. At first glance, it may be thought that I will be dealing with a variety of natural catastrophes, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, giant rockfalls, glacier lake outburst floods, landslides, avalanches, and floods. They are all objects of legitimate concern. However, a hazard only becomes a disaster when human beings or their infrastructure come into contact with a catastrophic natural process. Thus the scale of a disaster relates not only to the magnitude of the event (some product of volume, vertical interval of descent, and rate of movement), but to the number of lives and value of infrastructure in its path. This also changes through time.

Another consideration is the problem of landscape modification by human intervention. Since this is widespread, for the case of mountains I prefer the term mountain hazard. Furthermore, in the context of the human-natural hazard interface, human perception plays a significant role. This will be considered at some length. As an example: why should the State of Colorado expend millions of dollars on avalanche protection for Red Mountain Pass, where there have been only a handful of casualties, when many more lives are lost at unprotected railway crossings? At the other extreme, why has it been assumed that thousands of lives are lost and Bangladesh is inundated almost annually because of deforestation in the Himalaya when the cause-effect relationship is demonstrably insignificant. Bangladesh is flooded when it rains in Bangladesh! And the rural population ranks winter-season drought as a much more serious disaster than summer monsoon flooding. Misrepresentation itself, often deliberate, by sectional interests, but also by the news media, constitutes a major form of mountain disaster, or potential for disaster.

Finally, there is one form of disaster - warfare, in all its guises - while global, that is heavily biased towards mountains. During the 11^th December, 2001, launch of the IYM at United Nations headquarters, Jaques Diouf, Director-General of FAO, claimed that of the 27 extant wars, 23 were occurring in mountains. Until that statement, there had been barely a murmur about mountain warfare from the big agencies or national governments. 11-09-01 has changed that to a significant degree. However, much more attention needs to be paid to this form of disaster in the context of IYM and sustainable mountain development. This point will be enlarged upon. Obviously, such locations as Afghanistan, Kashmir, Caucasus, and 'Kurdistan' will be prominent. But I will also stress the so-called defensive stances, guerrilla warfare, the drug wars, and the systematic repression of mountain ethnic minorities. The case study I will use is that of the northeast of the Subcontinent, with emphasis on Bhutan. Unless the disaster of mountain warfare is effectively tackled, the prospect for sustainable mountain development over much of the mountain world is exceedingly grim.