Kashmir’s water bodies have declined for decades. Is conservation keeping pace?

A study in Water Science examining six decades of land use in Jammu and Kashmir found that water bodies shrank between 1960 and 2020 while built-up areas expanded sharply, especially after the 1990s. Researchers found socioeconomic factors like urbanization, population growth, and per capita income tracked more closely with these changes than climate variables such as precipitation and temperature.

Researchers describe paddy fields, canals, and springs vanishing under residential and industrial development, with siltation from deforested catchment areas and pollution from sewage and fertilizers compounding the damage to lakes like Wular and Dal. A researcher not involved in the study cautioned that each water body faces its own specific pressures, from willow infestation to houseboat sewage to sand mining, and urged conservationists to treat them individually rather than as one uniform crisis.

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