Mitigating disasters through community involvement and righteous practices in Himalayan region of Uttarakhand, India

Abstract

This paper critically examines the fact that though human beings are regarded as the most observant creatures of this earth, even then their persistent disobedience of nature’s prescriptions is steadily leading humanity towards unforeseen disasters. The content of the paper throws light on the factors responsible for such disasters and a definite mitigating course of futuristic actions. This also focuses on various unscrupulous practices occurring around the Himalayan area which are truly leading towards various man-made disasters. The content of the paper revolves around the Ganges valley of Uttarakhand which suffered one of the biggest holocausts of the modern world in the form of Kedarnath tragedy in the mid of June 2013, which exterminated thousands of lives in a single day. The paper deals with a real-life experiment conducted by one of the authors of this paper, in his capacity as a senior forest officer of one of the Himalayan states of India. This experiment embedded community involvement and fair execution practices to ensue strong mitigation measures for avoiding land disasters.