The Land of the Gods is Not Sustainable: Religion and Climate Change in the Uttarakhand Himalaya

I have been traveling to the Kedarnath valley since 1999. I saw one major period of explosive growth begin in the early 2000s that was destroyed by the floods of 2013. Since then, we have seen the region rebound with yet another period of even more explosive growth.  Based on my recent visit in the summer of 2023 (particularly the town of Ukhimath and the villages of Kimana, Rabi, and Jamu), I think that the draw of pilgrimage tourism currently far outweighs the attraction of local forms of religious practice that are grounded in sustainable relationships to the bioregion as well as the broader set of religious resources signified by the importance of the Garhwali Himalaya in Puranic stories and networks of sacred geography. It also becomes very difficult for locals to resist the pull of the forms of consumer behavior and energy usage that go along with the middle-class to upper-middle class way of life often signified by these visitors. 

Garhwali Religious Ecologies 

There are numerous forms of local mountain-Hindu religious practices found in Garhwal that could be classified as forms of “religious ecology,” to use the term developed by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, such as: 

• Worship of the culture hero Jeetu Bagadwal ritualizes the first plowing of the field.   
• Religiously infused environmental activism based in the powerful image of local women as tree protectors (the Chipko movement). 

•  Jal-yatra (water-pilgrimages) in which local women draw water from a local well and then carry it to offer a ritual bath to a local deity. 
• Serpent deities who guard water sources.  
• Sacred groves from which trees cannot be cut. 
• Forest deities such as Masan whose desires must be respected. 
• Mountain and forest nature spirits called acheri who kidnap unwary humans who attract their attention. 
• Powerfully affective relationships to goddess-rivers such as the Ganga and Yamuna. 
• The overarching notion of the region as Dev Bhumi, the Land of the Gods -- a region of pure air and sacred terrain that has the ability to purify and transform all those who enter.  

Trending towards the unsustainable 

 In other words, there are numerous religious resources that could potentially serve as anchors for eco-positive behavior and more sustainable trajectories of local and regional development within the state (recognizing of course that both within India and globally "sustainability" and "development" are fraught, overdetermined, and fluid concepts). However, as scholars such as David Haberman, Emma Tomalin, and Vijaya Nagarajan have observed, we know that the existence of religious ecological resources does not necessarily lead to those resources being used in a useful way.  

The sanctity of the "Land of the Gods" notwithstanding, the central Indian and Uttarakhand state governments in the last decade have built additional highways (and widened existing roads) to direct even more people into Uttarakhand for Char Dham pilgrimage tourism. A railway line is being constructed up into the mountains to terminate at Karnaprayag. Road widening (good for traffic, bad for mountain slope stability especially in times of floods and earthquakes) abounds. In the Kedarnath valley specifically there is an explosion of lodge construction and a proliferation of helicopter landing pads used to deliver visitors to Kedarnath via helicopter.  

In the decade since the disastrous flooding in the state in 2013, the Uttarakhand government has markedly improved the safeguards in place -- but the overall logic continues to be a commitment to the growing the overall number of visitors to the state with no clear defined upper limit. This imperative in clear and simple terms is at odds with most major forms of adaptation and mitigation that could be deployed in Uttarakhand because a precondition to most such changes would be fewer visitors. These developments essentially run counter to the idea that sustainable Himalayan futures ideally require more use of renewable energy and/or less overall demand for energy, less usage of goods coming from outside the region, and more attention to the increase of unpredictable intense rain, flooding, and landslides that are now a certainty.   

Broadly speaking, there are several clear macro-level strategies of mitigation and adaptation that could be relevant for Uttarakhand. 

• More use of renewable energy (particularly hydroelectric) and/or lowering energy demands at key times in the year. 
• Decentralization and diversification within the pilgrimage tourism industry so that visitors to the region are better spread over time and not concentrated in specific areas. 
• Greater economic diversification in the mountains around small-scale organic farming and local industries like weaving that allows people to stay in the mountains rather that move to cities or tourism corridors for livelihood.  

The problem is that these strategies are in various ways at odds with the resource and energy demands made by religious tourism infrastructure and by the growth of cities such as Dehra Dun (the capital city in Uttarakhand), growth that is in part funded by money from pilgrimage tourism and in part driven by the "Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive" (Prasad) initiative begun by the central Indian government in 2014-2015.  

Reflection on Necessary Conditions 

To me what this situation obviously shows is that the mere existence of strongly ecological religious resources is not enough. The trick is more about finding the conditions under which people are willing to make changes. I have observed three populations, broadly speaking, in the Kedarnath valley who are willing to try new patterns of livelihood, behavior, and resource use:  

1. People with permanent government jobs (for example in education) who know they are in the area for the long haul, have a guaranteed income, and thus have the resources to undertake long term projects of change. 
2. People who are able to try something new without cost to themselves because of a program funded by the government.
3. People have no other options and are willing to try something new to survive.

If some of the above incentivizing factors are in play then perhaps religious ideas and practices might have some traction. Otherwise, to me it seems unlikely.