In the foothills of the Himalayas, the Uttarakhand region focuses all the attention of New Delhi. This Indian state of 10 million inhabitants, bordering China and Nepal, has become a vast open-air construction site. A laboratory for the government of Narendra Modi who intends to take advantage of the geographical positioning of this region to make it the "hub" of renewable energies.
India, the world's third-largest CO2-emitting nation and 80% of whose electricity is generated by coal, is banking on the massive construction of hyrdro-electric power plants in this region to achieve carbon neutrality by 2070. Uttarakhand has assets: dozens of rivers and especially the Yamuna and the Ganges, the two most important rivers in the country. Problem: in addition to being located on a seismic zone, Uttarakhand is threatened by global warming, resulting in the accelerated melting of its glaciers.
Naresh Chauhan lives in the village of Lohari, which was submerged last year by authorities to create the water reservoir for the Vyasi hydroelectric dam. © France 24/Navodita Kumari
For the past ten years, this region has experienced natural disasters every year: landslides, avalance, glacier collapse or "cloudburst" - sudden storms that can destroy a valley in a few minutes. In 2013, 10,000 Hindu pilgrims died there in sudden inclement weather while paying their respects at a religious site. Nearly 4,000 of them have not been found.
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