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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Dirty, Sacred Rivers explores South Asia’s increasingly urgent water crisis, taking readers on a journey through North India, Nepal and Bangladesh, from the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal. The book shows how rivers, traditionally revered by the people of the Indian subcontinent, have in recent decades deteriorated dramatically due to economic progress and gross mismanagement. Dams and ill-advised embankments strangle the Ganges and its sacred tributaries. Rivers have become sewage channels for a burgeoning population. To tell the story of this enormous river basin, environmental journalist Cheryl Colopy treks to high mountain glaciers with hydrologists; bumps around the rough embankments of India’s poorest state in a jeep with social workers; and takes a boat excursion through the Sundarbans, the mangrove forests at the end of the Ganges watershed. Water is an essential component of environment that helps organisms to sustain life. The degradation of environment, through depletion of resources such as water, is affecting the human race at large. Air, water and soil are essential components of the ecosystem. Imbalance of any one of the components may cause serious damage to the survivability of human life. Environmental degradation pertains to deterioration of environmental conditions and circumstances, which affect humanity. With the passage of time environmental conditions of the world are getting worse and pose a great challenge to human life. This degradation has resulted from the careless attitude of humans towards the environment. It is largely affected by the environmental stress arising from such human activities as industrialization, by which carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide are emitted in the atmosphere. This trend leads to climate change, which means that the earth is becoming warmer as its ozone layer is gradually being damaged by the greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, deforestation, desertification, polluted atmosphere and scarcity of water resources in the world are adding up to environmental degradation. In South Asia, the depletion of water resources has become a looming crisis. This may have resulted partly from the climate change, and partly owing to mismanagement of water resources by the countries concerned. In this region environmental degradation has endangered the most fundamental aspect of human security by undermining the natural support system, given by water, on which all human activity depends. This environmental change can be regarded as the most pervasive source of insecurity and conflict in the region. Therefore, it is considered one of the ten threats officially cautioned against by the ―High-Level Threat Panel‖ of the United Nations. This study shall discuss the dirty, sacred rivers confronting south Asia’s water crisis.