Jammu, August 9: The climate change that has been the cause of worry world over is a reality staring on the mankind and Jammu and Kashmir is no exception.
In fact since the last year’s flashfloods that wreaked havoc in Jammu and Kashmir submerging the Srinagar city in several feet of water, the reality has dawned upon the people of the state that the climate change seems to have targeted J&K in more than one ways and people are worried how to deal with this new reality.
While last year it was the flooding of the Srinagar city and washing away of several areas of Jammu; this year the unheard cloud bursts at unexpected places is causing havoc and also sending shivers down the spine of those who till now were expecting hilly areas to be a safer place in J&K.
In this new phenomena of natural disasters the tribal community seems to have been caught unawares threatening its existence as it is this community that will have to suffer the most due to their traditional habitats that fall in hilly areas and inside the forests.
Tribal community is worried more because recently a cloudburst hit the shepherds in a hilly area killing many sheep and goat and inflicting heavy damage even as human loss is fortunately yet on the lower side.
It was perhaps in this background that the Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation today issued an advisory to the nomadic Gujjar and Bakerwal community to depend more on their traditional ways to tackle the situation arising out of severe climatic change in the state.
The advisory is timely and also right in the sense that to deal with the natural phenomena it is better to deal with it in natural ways as the ancestors of the tribal’s used to deal without depending on the modern science to predict the rain or floods.
The traditional Dera heads were briefed by the foundation at a meeting held where they were advised not to panic and go back to their ancestral knowledge inherited by them to deal with these kinds of natural disasters.
Since the cloud bursts, lightening, landslides, and flash floods have become a norm in the state for the past couple of years and hundreds of live stock of the tribal’s has perished it is in the interests of the tribal community to utilize their expertise to save themselves as no amount of science or the government facilities can step in under such unpredictable and unforeseen natural events.
Here one would also like to drive home a point not only for the tribals’ but for everyone alike to respect the nature and use the traditional concepts of preserving the nature to save this planed from extinction.
Closer home the devastation to nature has been enormous by the greedy people who can go to any extent to destroy nature for their petty interests which was primary reason for flooding of the entire Srinagar city last year.
The encroachments of river beds and closure of outlets of water bodies turned into a death trap for the Srinagar city while thousands were affected in other parts of the state mostly due to human interference in the nature.
While residents of J&K alone cannot be held responsible for the severe climate change but it is every step that counts in this direction and if we start behaving and respecting nature the nature would also reciprocate and create a chain reaction to bring harmony in the world between nature and the human kind.