A white paper released on World Earth Day is calling for a fundamental overhaul of how India plans and builds across the Himalayan region. Titledย The Future of the Himalayas: Rethinking Development and Resilience, the document was launched by the CP Kukreja Foundation for Design Excellence in New Delhi, with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu as chief guest.
The report draws on a closed-door Himalayan Roundtable that brought together engineers, ecologists, governance experts, hydrologists, and social scientists. It does not offer a single prescription. Instead, it identifies a deeper problem: decisions are being made in silos, while the Himalayas function as one connected system.
The Indian Himalayan Region has seen a 15 to 20 percent rise in extreme rainfall events since the 1950s. Over 80 percent of the region is vulnerable to landslides. India records 12.6 percent of all landslides globally, and the Himalayas bear the highest concentration.
The white paper links recent disasters directly to this pattern. The 2013 Kedarnath floods, the 2022โ23 subsidence of Joshimath, and the 2023 glacial lake outburst flood in Sikkim are not treated as one-off events. The report states that in each case, scientific data identifying the risks had already existed. It simply was not integrated into planning decisions in time.
“These events are often characterised as natural disasters,” the paper notes. “However, in many cases, they represent predictable outcomes of decisions taken without full engagement with available data.”
Infrastructure Problem
Over 70 percent of Himalayan roads are built using hill-cutting methods without adequate slope stabilisation, according to Border Roads Organisation data cited in the report. Roads typically begin as narrow single-lane tracks and are widened incrementally as demand grows. Each expansion removes more material, destabilises slopes further, and leaves little time for recovery between phases.
Lt. Gen. Harpal Singh (Retd.), former Director General of the Border Roads Organisation, is direct in his assessment, “The Himalayas cannot be engineered through replication; they require contextual, terrain-specific design.”
He draws attention to a factor that is often underestimated, “In mountain engineering, drainage is more important than structure. Most Himalayan failures are not structural failures, they are hydrological failures.”
The report notes that more than 60 percent of landslides in the Himalayas are rainfall-triggered, not seismic. When road construction disrupts natural drainage channels, water accumulates within slopes, increasing internal pressure until the slope gives way.
Singh adds a warning for the current climate era, “Designing for yesterday’s climate in the Himalayas creates tomorrow’s disasters.”
Data Exists, Problem Is How It Is Used
One of the white paper’s most consistent findings is that the Himalayan region does not suffer from a lack of data. Geological surveys, satellite imagery, hydrological records, and climate projections all exist. What is missing is a mechanism to make that data central to decision-making.
Dr. Reet Kamal Tiwari, Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Ropar, highlights the mismatch, development decisions are frequently taken before scientific assessment takes place. Technical validation then happens retroactively, effectively reducing data to a tool for post-facto justification rather than planning.
The report calls for a unified data ecosystem, a shared, continuously updated platform where geological, hydrological, and infrastructure data can be accessed across agencies. Without it, the paper argues, “even the most advanced analytical tools remain underutilised.”
The white paper identifies fragmented governance as a structural problem. River basins and mountain slopes do not follow district or state boundaries. But planning and enforcement do.
Amit Prothi, Director General of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, points to the regulatory gap, building codes and environmental norms exist on paper, but enforcement is inconsistent. This is compounded by a shortage of professionals trained specifically in mountain conditions.
Chief Minister Pema Khandu, speaking at the launch, acknowledged the difficulty of balancing growth with ecological limits. “Development in the Himalayan region must be approached through an integrated framework, combining scientific assessment, responsible planning, sustainable infrastructure, community participation, and strong policy alignment,” he said. He called for institutions including NITI Aayog to work in a “mission-mode approach to embed long-term resilience and contextual understanding into every development decision.”
What the Report Is Asking For
The white paper puts forward four directions: planning at the scale of ecological systems rather than administrative units; reorienting infrastructure away from road-heavy expansion toward rail and distributed models; reforming institutions to enable cross-agency coordination; and integrating local cultural and community knowledge into development planning.
Dikshu C. Kukreja, Director of the Foundation, framed the core argument at the launch, “Unless we act responsibly, its impacts will only intensify. Protecting the Himalayas is not just an environmental priority, it is central to securing our collective future.”
The region directly supports water and food security for an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 billion people downstream across South Asia. The report’s closing argument is straightforward: the Himalayas do not fail without reason. They respond to what is imposed on them. When development ignores the system, instability follows, not as an anomaly, but as an outcome.
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