“All the water from the sky flows to the sea. All the fruits of development flow to the builders,” Padma Bhushan Professor Madhav Gadgil said with a laugh after reading one of his own epigrams. Recipient of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) ‘Champion of the Earth’ award and numerous other accolades, the optimistic octogenarian’s words reflect his deep empathy for Earth’s ecology. A year after the deadly landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad district, Prof. Gadgil spoke about what went wrong, and what must be done to protect the planet, and ourselves. Excerpts from an interview :
The 2024 Meppadi landslide is a great tragedy, but sadly, it is not unexpected. Landslides are becoming increasingly common, not just in Wayanad but across the country. We now have solid data indicating that we are approaching a tipping point. A geologist friend of mine has carefully gathered data from the Western Ghats in Maharashtra and found that the number of landslides between 2010 and 2020 increased by 100 times. This includes small, medium, and large-scale events. Unfortunately, this trend is likely to continue, leading to even more frequent and severe disasters
