Every monsoon, the Himalayas deliver the same lesson in mud, water and rubble: fragile mountains do not forgive careless development. Floods, landslides and other extreme events are no longer distant warnings but recurring disasters, and the voices urging caution are growing louder. Among them is Sunita Narain, Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), who has repeatedly argued that climate change can no longer be treated as an abstract threat, and that disturbing fragile ecosystems in pursuit of an aggressive development model carries a heavy price.
That argument raises an uncomfortable question for India itself: are the same environmental principles being applied consistently to development projects at home?
Arunachal Pradesh is a telling case. Much of the state lies in the eastern Himalayas, a sensitive and seismically active region of steep terrain, major river systems and biodiversity-rich forests, home to communities whose livelihoods depend on local ecosystems. Successive governments have promoted large hydropower projects there as part of India's energy, infrastructure and strategic goals. Proponents present them as sources of renewable electricity, revenue, employment and national development.
Yet the environmental risks cannot be dismissed simply because hydropower is classified as renewable. Large dams in mountainous terrain involve extensive tunnelling, blasting, road construction, forest clearance, river diversion and changes to downstream hydrology. In a seismically active and geologically complex landscape, the cumulative effect of numerous projects may exceed the impact of any single one assessed in isolation. Landslides, sedimentation, extreme rainfall and shifting river behaviour further complicate risk assessment in an era of climate uncertainty.
This does not mean every dam will cause a disaster, or that hydropower in Arunachal Pradesh is inherently unacceptable. It does demand far more rigorous scrutiny of site-specific risks, cumulative impacts, seismic vulnerability, downstream consequences and the resilience of local communities.
Public consent matters equally. Local communities, civil-society groups and environmental campaigners have opposed individual projects and aspects of the state's hydropower programme. Their objections include concerns over land, forests, rivers, displacement, cultural landscapes and the distribution of economic benefits. In a democracy, the right response to such opposition is transparent consultation and open examination of the evidence, not treating dissent as an obstacle to national development.
This points to a wider dilemma for India's environmental discourse. If environmental organizations and public intellectuals rightly warn Nepal, Bhutan or other Himalayan countries about destabilizing fragile mountain environments, India's own Himalayan choices deserve the same scrutiny. Environmental principles should not change with national borders.
To be clear, India should care about disasters elsewhere, and there is nothing contradictory about an Indian organization commenting on ecological problems in neighbouring countries. Environmental degradation in the Himalayas is inherently transboundary: rivers, ecosystems, climate systems and disaster risks do not stop at political boundaries. The harder question is one of institutional consistency.
If fragile Himalayan ecosystems are vulnerable to excessive infrastructure development in Nepal, the same analytical framework should apply to Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and other Indian Himalayan regions. If landslide disasters are read partly through the lens of ecological vulnerability and poorly planned development, Indian projects should be examined the same way. And if climate resilience is essential, major infrastructure must show how it will remain safe under increasingly uncertain rainfall, temperature and hydrological conditions.
There is also a danger in attributing every disaster primarily to climate change. Climate change can raise the probability or intensity of certain extreme events, but vulnerability is also shaped by land-use decisions, deforestation, drainage, settlement patterns, infrastructure design and governance. A disaster is often the product of a natural hazard meeting human vulnerability. That is especially true in the Himalayas.
The answer, then, is neither to abandon development nor to assume every project is destructive. It is to ask whether development is designed for the ecological and geological conditions of the region. In Arunachal Pradesh, that means assessing projects individually and cumulatively, strengthening independent environmental review, incorporating updated seismic and climate-risk assessments, protecting community participation, and weighing the promised economic benefits of hydropower against long-term ecological and social costs.
The credibility of India's environmental debate rests on this consistency. India cannot reasonably urge its Himalayan neighbours to reconsider risky development while treating comparable questions within its own territory as secondary to national infrastructure goals. Nor should concern for India's own environment be read as opposition to development. The challenge is to show that development and ecological security are being planned together.
Arunachal Pradesh offers an opportunity for exactly the self-reflection that climate advocates have called for elsewhere. Before asking whether the countries around India are developing sustainably, India can ask the same of itself.
The strongest environmental leadership would not only warn others about ecological degradation. It would demonstrate, through its own decisions, that economic development, climate resilience, geological safety and the protection of fragile ecosystems can go together. That would make India's environmental argument considerably more credible, both at home and across the Himalayas.
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*With the Institute for Research and Action for Development (IRADe)
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