jueves, 9 de agosto de 2007

Monsoon floods devastate South Asia

New Scientist Environment

* 09 August 2007
*
* Magazine issue 2616

Floods in the mountain kingdom of Nepal? It sounds unlikely, but Nepal has a low-lying region called Terai, and much of it has been submerged in the past week following intense rains during the south Asian monsoon. Even more surprisingly, Nepal is blaming its downstream neighbour, India, for the floods.

The Nepalese foreign ministry charges that dams built by India all along the border, often illegally, are preventing rivers draining from Nepal and causing hundreds of the country's villages to disappear under water. The dams are on tributaries of the river Ganges that flow out of the Himalayas. The Indian state of Bihar has been protected at the expense of Terai, Nepal claims.

Political tensions have risen as parliamentarians in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, have demanded that India demolish dams, including the 13-kilometre-long Laxmanpur barrage on the Rapti river. Indian politicians have countered that Nepal should instead build its own ...

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