A deserted Marina beach in Chennai before Cyclone Nivar made landfall, November 25, 2020. Photo: Reuters/P. Ravikumar.
Chandigarh: The Kedarnath deluge in 2013 grabbed headlines in India and around the world, but it was far from an isolated incident. An independent analysis by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), described in a report entitled ‘Preparing India for Extreme Climate Events’, has found that over 85% of Uttarakhand’s districts, home to over nine crore people, are ‘hotspots’ for extreme floods.
Indeed, the frequency and intensity of such flood events in Uttarakhand have increased four-fold since 1970. The chances of associated events like landslides and glacial lake bursts…