So Far from the Oak Grove

Finger Trees below Nadi

I’ve pontificated on water, global warming, traditional arts and culinary misadventure. Seems, then, like it’s time to talk about wood. The forests around the lower Himalaya are historically lush, ranging from semi-tropical rainforest to high alpine jungle. They boast a wider array of flora and fauna than that seen in most parts of the world. In one day, I could count dozens of kinds of butterflies and insects of all shapes, colors and sizes. Larger animals too, of course — from wild chickens and other similarly sized birds, to no fewer than seven or eight types of wild cats. We may have spotted the fleeing end of a leopard today. Or maybe just a local monkey. There are dozens of varieties of rhododendron, and many many other kinds of trees, undergrowth plants, and flowers.

Yet the forests are fragile. Warmer climate has combined with overpopulation in the mountains to place inordinate pressure on the ecosystems. I am learning that felling of trees for timber, cutting of branches for fodder for animals, and construction of roads on steep mountainsides all play a role.

Good grazing ground for cows and other animals is too scarce for the load of the growing population. The popularity of cow breeds (namely the Jersey), deemed to be greater milk producers but actually not so good when not fed their premium diet, have made matters worse. They cannot graze the steep slopes as their more nimble mountain cow counterparts can, and thus their owners resort to chopping branches from trees to feed. Whole forests of oak are slowly dying because of this, over-chopped of their prolific boughs. Government- and privately-controlled lands, and places too far away from villages, are the last vestiges of uncut forest. I’ve started calling them ‘finger trees’, for the way they appear like fingers pointing towards the sky.

Roads, though a boon for development, new forms of livelihood, and communication, are not such a boon to the forest. Since the terrain is so steep, huge swaths must be cut to make switchbacks, and often the re-engineered banks cannot support the old growth.

In the place of ancient forest, many slopes now only support a peppering of large, piney trees — tapped by the locals for the makings of turpentine. These trees do not support the kind of lush microclimates that the old forests did, and they allow for continued drying-out of soils and ecosystem.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are some places that have never seen an axe taken to their old trees. High up and away from the margin of human habitation, virgin forests still exist. And while also affected by climate change, it’s a little less conspicuous.

Vista near Laka

Last Saturday the weather allowed for visit. On a scramble up to Laka, an outlook and mountain saddle at around 11,300 ft, climbing along the ridge from Dharamkot towards the first high range of the Himalaya, ancient herder trails weave from high, lush pasture through gnarled groves of long-standing oak and pine. Snow lingered on the northern slope and I dreamt of skiing. From there, the route to the high range is traceable in one direction. In the other direction, one can see clear down to the plains, to lower Dharamsala, Kangra, and beyond. Yet tucked away from direct sight of the nearest towns of McLeod Ganj and Bagsu, it is quiet. The high perch meadow of Triund, a popular day-hike destination, nestles 1,700 ft below.

This is the abode of passing Gaddi herders, crows, spirits, and the occasional rambler-through. Though I don’t know — but doubt — that these areas are formally protected, they are as-yet unaccessible to the general population, and seem safe for the time being.

[points to anyone who got the obscure reference to the young adult bestseller, So Far from the Bamboo Grove]

Dari Melee

“Mela” is “fair” in Hindi, and Easter Sunday here coincided with the Dari mela. Dari is one of the villages just below the main town of Dharamsala. The fair, which clogged the town’s artery road with vendors on both sides, and spilled out into what I assume is normally an empty field, drew village and townsfolk from around the region.

It was a good excuse for an outing, perhaps a bit of adventure, and some hoped-for additional tea mugs. A funny array of goods and kitch were for sale. In the typical fashion I’ve come to expect in India, row after row of stalls sold very similar goods, either socks and underwear, kitchen ware, gaudy marbles in glass jars, or food. It is one of the larger fairs in Himachal Pradesh and people really came out of the woodwork. Announcers, rides, the whole deal.

And, the tea mugs were to be found! There were already a few here in the kitchen, found in the McLeod Ganj fair last fall. They’re these great little terra-cotta looking cups — and I broke one a few weeks ago — so we got another 10 (plus 2 glasses) for 100 rupees. All in all, very much worth braving the melee.

Water flows around India

[I've returned to the world of home Internet, finally coming out of a week without, after a road crew cut the cables going to the entire village. The week was also visited by a dearth of electricity, so I'm now catching up.]

Water quality, water availability, and water rights are increasingly at risk around the world. Recently I’ve been reading up on new ideas for what to do about it, and have been especially interested in attempts to calculate ‘water footprint’ and to coax ‘virtual water’ to flow in the most efficient directions.

Water footprint formulae, like carbon footprint calculations, attempt to quantify the total amount of resource used in making, transporting, using and disposing of a particular product. You can go to waterfootprint.org and find the total amounts of water used for all kinds of things, from coffee (140 liters/cup) to clothing (2700 liters for one shirt). These calculations are difficult and imprecise, but they’re a start.

As if it’s not complicated enough to figure out the embodied water use of every product, calculating an individual’s water footprint appears to be even more challenging. Not because it’s hard to add up the total gallons used, for every process and product, but because people’s water footprints have different levels of impact depending on the availability of water in their local area.

It seems that a footprint calculation has local and global components: local availability of the resource, plus global trade in the resource. In calculating carbon footprint, I don’t think the local component is taken into account (ie the challenge of procuring petrol in India vs in the United States). But in a water footprint, it is a prominent piece. A farmer in water-rich southern China, who uses x amount for irrigation should, all else being equal, have the same water footprint as a farmer in drought-ridden sub-Saharan Africa, but the impact is less. (Water footprint)-(Water availability)=impact. Or something.

That’s water being used.  Water also moves: it moves across the world in natural form as rivers, lakes and glaciers cross borders, in man-made physical form, and in products that people move across borders. Man-made physical water trade comes in the form of massive projects: China’s South-North is a huge plan to transfer water from to the water-scarce Huang-Huai-Hai (Yellow River area) Plain in the north, from the water-rich south. India’s National River Linking Program aims to build aqueducts and upwards of 25,000 km of canals, connecting 37 watersheds around the country. Globally, projects like these that are already completed transfer around 490×10^9 m^3/yr (pdf) per year. Planned projects, mainly in the Americas, Asia, and Europe, would add 1,150 x 10^9 m^3/year.

Virtual water encompasses the water footprint that moves when a product is transported. For example, a melon grown in California, transported to New York, would carry with it the water footprint of its production. That movement is ‘virtual water.’ These days, virtual water moves around the world in all manner of ways. It turns out the flows are anything but resource-efficient, with virtual water often moving from water-scarce areas to water-rich areas. Some opponents of massive water transfer projects have been pointing toward aligning virtual water flows with the direction of the needed water transfer.

A case study of virtual water trade of agricultural products around the various parts of India asks what it would take to correct these flows, and introduced me to some of the issues. Citing a 2006 study, it says:

North China exports 52×109 m3/yr of virtual water to south China, a volume which is more than the maximum proposed water transfer volume along three routes (38 – 43×109 m3/yr) in the South-North Transfer Project. The study therefore concludes that if the “perverse” direction of virtual water trade in China can be reversed, it can act as a better alternative to physical transfer of water across basins. It is with a similar logic that the idea of virtual water trade within India is being proposed as an alternative to the NRLP.

The study goes on to look at virtual water transfer in India, which mostly flows from the dry north-west areas of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh to wetter eastern areas of Bihar, and to the south, to Kerala.  It’s pretty dramatic: In Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, the main water exporters, per capita water resources  2176, 2922, and 3554 cubic meters per year respectively.  In Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa, per capita water resources are 4580, 6898, and 8710 cubic meters per year respectively.

Though it would seem logical that areas rich in a resource would export products that require that resource to poorer areas, it turns out that decades watching international trade show it’s often not the case. The study considers a bunch of other factors, trying to find one that might be driving the exports in the wrong water direction.

The two factors that seem to have the most impact on agricultural produce exports are ‘per capita cropped area (area under agricultural production)’ and ‘access to secure markets’. There are many political, cultural, and economic reasons why this might be.

Perhaps partly because in areas where there is more growing, there is more irrigation and therefore more subsidy, propping up an illusory water availability perception, or driving down water ‘prices’. ‘Per capita cropped area’ may not take into account fallow land (not that there’s much in India), or land that could be productive if given the same level of public infrastructure. Other production factors, like local knowledge, pests, branding/perception, traditions also must play a part. And, access to secure markets is a diplomatic phrase encompassing the buying policy of the Food Corporation of India, which buys a huge percentage of all crops in its massive food security and subsidization projects, favoring some areas (that happen to be more water-scarce) over others.

The conclusion is that water scarcity is not the most important factor. Yet. Until it is, it won’t drive agricultural transport. The study makes some interesting points about the main factors, land availability or access to markets:

By importing food grains from a land rich state, a land scarce region is economizing on its land use. Following the virtual water trade logic, this can be termed as virtual land trade. A land-scarce region (such as Bihar) would import crops from regions where land productivity is higher (for instance, Punjab). In order to produce the same amount of food in Bihar, Bihar would have to employ more land than Punjab (Aggarwal et al., 2000). If, and as long as, land is the critical constraining resource, Bihar would like to economize on its land use, even at the cost of inefficient or incomplete utilization of its abundant water resources.

This study didn’t include the environmental or economic costs of transporting goods, which might change the equation as well. Though that’s another set of thorny issues — trade is a good thing, so is locally produced and consumed food.  There are numerous ways to look at this information as an opportunity to clean up policy, start small enterprises, and educate communities on what they can do.  I’ll be looking into it more, as I am able.

Kitchen Musings

A little break from health figures and water scarcity discussion:

Papaya, Mango, Chicu, Orange, Apple, Grapes, Banana

It seems like a lot of my thoughts these days revolve around food and cooking.  I guess that’s what happens when a few hours a day are spent either procuring produce and other perishables, or cooking.

Lately the kitchen has seen a few baking experiments… experiments because they’re done on the stove top, no oven.  The latest was a ‘dinner cookie’, banana, ground up almonds (see post about the Craze 95), flax, oats, flour, egg, milk, a little ghee (boiled down from really rich yak butter from last fall’s trip to Tibet), spices, and a drop of maple syrup – yes, I brought some from Vermont.  Patted out thin and cooked on the roti pan, served with jam.  Yum!

I think the kitchen will return to savory cooking soon, as I picked up some of the last of the season’s greens today.  On Wednesdays I go into town for my Tibetan lesson (Mondays and Fridays, my teacher comes to me), and I wandered past the vegetable-wallahs on my way home.  Most of the produce they sell comes up from the plains — mostly from Punjab — but the greens are local, and sometimes it’s possible to get really short-season, very local things, like fresh beans.  It’s been fun to branch out a bit.  As long as you’re willing to eat what’s in season, it’s easy to put together really good meals.  Helps if you know something of Indian cooking, spices, how to work with each vegetable.  And a little willingness to experiment!