Mohammad Hanief
The mountains and valleys of Jammu and Kashmir have long been a refuge of scenic abundance, but the region now finds itself confronting an unrelenting cascade of environmental threats that cut across its varied landscapes. This is no longer a localised crisis confined to alpine pastures or lakefronts; the unfolding realities-from the Jammu plains to the high Himalaya-paint a picture of a territory where extreme weather, rapid land-use change, retreating glaciers, and governance gaps are combining to undermine livelihoods, public health, and ecological resilience.
The summer of 2025 made the new normal brutally visible. A cloudburst in mid-August sent a wall of water racing through remote hamlets on the Machail Mata pilgrimage route in Kishtwar district, killing scores and exposing the fragility of high-altitude settlements and pilgrimage logistics. Rescue teams found communities cut off, houses buried in mud and debris, and rivers transformed into destructive torrents in a matter of minutes-an acute illustration of how sudden hydrological events now threaten lives and infrastructure across the territory.
Those flash floods were followed by widespread heavy rains through August and September that battered large parts of Jammu and Kashmir. The Jammu division suffered extensive damage, with thousands of houses destroyed or rendered uninhabitable and vast tracts of farmland washed away, while parts of the Valley endured disrupted water supplies, road closures, and localized inundations. The geographic spread of these events underlined a worrying truth: both the Jammu plains and the mountainous Kashmir Valley are now vulnerable to extremes that the existing protective systems were not designed to handle.
The hydrological shocks are intensified by long-term climatic shifts. Scientific monitoring and regional studies have recorded accelerating glacial retreat across the Western Himalaya and Zanskar ranges, with some glaciers showing markedly faster rates of shrinkage and attendant growth in proglacial lakes. These changes threaten seasonal water availability for irrigation and hydropower downstream and increase the risk of glacial lake outburst floods-events that could wreak havoc across river basins if early warning, monitoring and mitigation are not substantially scaled up. Forest loss and rising incidents of fire have added another layer of instability. Across districts from Kishtwar and Doda to parts of Baramulla and Anantnag, dry spells and human activity have contributed to an uptick in fire episodes that scar both remote forests and peri-urban green belts. The removal of tree cover accelerates erosion, makes slopes more prone to landslides during heavy rains, and reduces the landscape’s ability to absorb and slow runoff-factors that directly amplify flood and debris flow impacts downstream. The nexus between deforestation, slope instability and disaster exposure is becoming starkly evident as extreme rainfall events grow more frequent.
Meanwhile, the tourism boom that has driven recent economic recovery in many parts of the territory carries its own environmental price. An influx of visitors-both domestic and international-has overloaded waste management systems in popular hotspots from Gulmarg to newer offbeat valleys, producing visible litter, overflowing dumping sites, and sanitation stresses where infrastructure is weak. Improper disposal of solid waste and untreated sewage is increasingly evident along lakeshores and riverbanks, which degrades aquatic habitats and poses public health threats to local residents dependent on these waters. The growth in short-term accommodation and commercial facilities has also pushed construction into sensitive zones, eroding traditional buffers and wetlands that once helped modulate floods.
Water bodies that once defined the region’s identity are under severe pressure. Iconic lakes and wetlands, long central to ecology, livelihoods and tourism, are suffering from siltation, nutrient loading, and contamination by untreated waste. The ecological degradation of these wetlands not only reduces biodiversity and fish populations but also diminishes their role as natural sponges during heavy rains. For communities that depend on lake-fisheries, reed harvesting, and tourism, the economic fallout is mounting alongside environmental decline.
Agriculture, the backbone of many rural economies in Jammu and Kashmir, is being reshaped by climatic unpredictability and soil health decline. Erratic precipitation, shifting snowmelt patterns and episodic droughts are complicating sowing and harvesting windows, while intensified use of chemical inputs in some areas is degrading long-term fertility and contaminating waterways. Fruit growers-whose apples, walnuts and saffron contribute substantially to regional incomes-have felt the impact acutely when transport links fail during floods or produce spoils due to delayed market access. The result is an erosion of resilience in communities that historically depended on predictable seasonal cycles.
Layered over natural hazards are human pressures that amplify risk. Illegal and unregulated extraction of riverbed materials and minor minerals has altered channel morphology and weakened embankments, increasing susceptibility to flood damage. Large infrastructure projects, road expansions and tunnel works, if advanced without rigorous environmental safeguards, can aggravate slope destabilization and fragment wildlife corridors. While regulatory bodies have expanded monitoring capacities in recent years, enforcement remains uneven, particularly in remote reaches where state presence and institutional capacity are limited.
Public health consequences of environmental degradation are manifesting in multiple ways. Rising air pollution episodes in urban centres during winter inversions, contaminated water sources near dumping grounds, and vector proliferation in stagnant floodwaters all pose immediate health risks. The most vulnerable populations-residents of informal settlements, low-income families near dumping sites, and rural households dependent on local water-are disproportionately affected, exacerbating inequality and eroding social resilience in the face of repeated hazards.
Despite the magnitude of the challenges, pathways for action exist. Strengthening early warning systems for cloudbursts and flash floods, expanding glacier and hydrological monitoring networks, formalizing waste management and sanitation infrastructure in tourism hotspots, and enforcing sustainable land-use planning are urgent priorities. Community-led watershed protection, reforestation of degraded slopes, and stricter oversight of mining and construction can reduce exposure and restore some measure of ecological function. Equally important is integrating disaster risk reduction with livelihood support so that resilience measures are socially inclusive and economically feasible.
The environmental predicament of Jammu and Kashmir is not an abstract threat; it is reshaping daily life across the region. From Jammu’s lowlands to the high passes of the Valley and the fragile cryosphere of the west Himalaya, hazards now intersect with development and culture in ways that demand coordinated, science-based and community-anchored responses. The loss of a forest or a wetland or a season’s crop would be a local blow, but the accumulation of these losses threatens the territorial fabric itself. If the past few seasons are any guide, the window to act decisively is narrowing-and the cost of delay will be measured not only in degraded landscapes but in human lives and livelihoods.
(The author is a senior analyst in Kashmir)
