Making Molehills of Mountains: Communities and Constitutional Rights in the Times of Climate Crisis

The third instalment in the Making Molehills of Mountains series, this edition of the book closely examines 98 news articles about climate disasters and accidents in Uttarakhand that are covered in its Uttarakhand Disaster and Accident Analysis Initiative (UDAAI) reports. Five major reasons for disasters were gleaned from these reports: infrastructure induced disaster risk and the crisis of mobility; glacial lakes, cryosphere change and the illusion of preparedness; emergence of urban and semi-urban disaster landscapes; chronic administrative delay, fragmented governance and accountability deficit in disaster prevention; and the ecological burden of mass tourism in a fragile Himalayan landscape. Dots are joined and in-depth articles on all these five issues by field experts enrich this issue. The book also traces the intimate weave of Constitution, legislation, and nature as have unfolded in Uttarakhand and explains why population-based delimitation fails Uttarakhand. It also gives a first-hand account of why locals in hill stations are no longer happy with tourists and their ways. This is more than a book − it is a map of what climate disasters in Uttarakhand point to.