After witnessing one of the coldest of April months this year we now are witnessing the hottest May month in decades. In Qazigund a few days ago we are witnessing the hottest May day inover four decades. Same is the story with other places in the valley. Even though the temperatures are bordering on the mid-30s but the general protocol of weather analysis concludes that in hills where there is direct heat mid-30s is a heat wave. This sudden May heat has the potential to lit up forest forest creating further trouble to the ecology of the region. While we are talking about the Kashmir valley we cannot for one minute lose the sight of Jammu City where the temperatures are hovering around the mid-40s. In Rocky terrain like Jammu one can have sympathy with people as those of us who have lived a summer or two in Jammu knows what 43 or 44 degree Celsius means in such a hilly city – a absolutely unmanageable experience.
How did things come to this pass? How did we allow the phenomenon of global warming reach out shores? We all know there was incalculable loss to our forests in the 90s? The forests thinned out at an extremely great speed and the checks and balances in place had hit a rock bottom of malfunctioning. It was an open loot for anyone with some connections and some power. Historians somewhere after three of four decades can exhaust book volumes on how this daylight forest robbery was allowed to happen under the pretext of violence and all.
Right now the challenge at hand is massive. If this trend of suddenly cold and suddenly hot temperature follows for some more time then we may have to shift from our current bunch of grain and cash crops. Are we preparing ourselves for such changes or just waiting for a divine intervention to ease out things? Are we prepared to bear consequences of that plunder we did thirty years ago? It is strange that even thirty years of afforestation has not been able to keep pace with what we lost in the 90s.
The present we are seeing now is for all the money the future. If massive afforestation is not undertaken quickly and for urban forestry methods like Miyawaki forestation are not initiated things can only get worse from here. If this is what we have to endure in May then one can only imagine the condition in June and July.
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