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A series of landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept across eight Indian states in July 2024, resulting in the tragic loss of at least 304 lives. The unprecedented scale of the disaster was underscored by a single incident in Kerala's Wayanad district, where 285 people perished on July 30, accounting for nearly 94 per cent of the total fatalities.
According to data from Union ministry of home affairs, the remaining 19 deaths occurred in the southern state of Karnataka and the six Himalayan states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and Uttarakhand.
The Landslides Atlas of India, 2023 by National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, identified the northernmost Himalayan states, such as Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as the worst affected by landslides due to their location within the ecologically fragile Himalayas. However, the Western Ghats, particularly in Kerala, exhibit higher vulnerability due to the high population and household density, despite experiencing fewer landslides than the Himalayan regions.
Wayanad district ranks 13th out of 147 districts in India based on socioeconomic indicators related to landslide vulnerability across 17 states and two Union Territories. Within Kerala, Wayanad ranks fifth among the 14 districts, following Thrissur, Palakkad, Malappuram and Kozhikode.
The scale of the devastation in Wayanad aligns with the findings of the atlas. The landslides in Kerala are reminiscent of the 2005 disaster in Maharashtra, which recorded 293 out of the 590 human deaths due to landslides that year.
As of August 1, 2024, around 240 people are still missing in Wayanad, suggesting that the death toll may rise, potentially surpassing the fatalities recorded in Maharashtra 20 years ago. An analysis of officially recorded landslide deaths shows that Kerala had the highest number of deaths in India in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The recent landslide in Wayanad marks the highest death toll recorded in Kerala in over 20 years, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides reports released annually between 2003 and 2022.
Previously, the highest death toll from landslides in Kerala was in 2018, when 135 people were killed due to landslides during the state's worst floods of the 21st century.
Between 2015 and 2024, 669 people perished in landslides in Kerala, nearly seven times the 96 fatalities recorded between 2005 and 2014. This indicates that the landslides in this decade have been far deadlier.
Climate experts attribute the Wayanad landslide to exceptionally heavy rainfall, a direct result of warming in the Arabian Sea. The district received 6 per cent of its annual rainfall in just a few hours on July 30, 2024, according to an analysis by Down to Earth.
Kerala’s mountainous topography and hydrological features increase its vulnerability to natural hazards. However, environmentally damaging activities such as deforestation and unplanned construction are key drivers behind this devastation, warned Western Ghats ecology expert panel led by scientist Madhav Gadgil and the high-level Kasturirangan Committee in 2011 and 2013, respectively.
Following the 2018 floods, the State Disaster Management Authority warned that unsustainable land use patterns in violation of norms increase disaster risks, including landslides. This was evident from a court hearing in December 2021 regarding constructions in landslide-prone areas in Vythiri taluk of Wayanad district, violating a ban on buildings above 10 metres.
Wayanad district’s forest cover decreased from 1,775 square kilometres to 1,580.51 sq km, a nearly 11 per cent decline over 14 years, reported the Forest Survey of India’s State of Forest reports released between 2007 and 2021.
Forest land diverted for non-forest purposes in Kerala increased by 178 per cent between 2008-09 and 2022-23. The rate of diversion peaked between 2021-22 and 2022-23, with forest land diversion increasing 35-fold, the highest in 15 years.
In 2022-23, 137.19 hectares of forest land were diverted for non-forest use, compared to 3.9 hectares in 2021-22, Bhupender Yadav, Union minister of environment, forest and climate change (MoEF&CC), told the Lok Sabha, August 2023.
From 2005 to 2022, the number of tourists visiting Wayanad district increased eightfold. According to Kerala Tourism Statistics-2022, 1,513,141 tourists visited the area in 2022, up from 193,068 in 2005.
In May 2024, the Wayanad Prakrithi Samrakshana Samithi (Wayanad Nature Protection Forum), a group of environmentalists, raised concerns over the increasing number of tourists and related development activities in the ecologically fragile district.
Despite Kerala’s ecological fragility, no specific scientific study has been conducted on the environmental degradation and fragility of the state’s environment. This has resulted in incessant flash floods, landslides, and soil silting, increasing soil vulnerability, Kirti Vardhan Singh, Minister of State for MOEF&CC, told the Lok Sabha on July 22, 2024.
Meanwhile, the southern bench of the National Green Tribunal on July 30, 2024, expressed concern over the unprecedented landslides that devastated Wayanad and decided to take up a suo moto hearing.
The disaster in Wayanad serves as a warning to other ecologically vulnerable districts in Kerala and states like Tamil Nadu, where unscientific construction in hilly regions without sufficient risk assessment has been observed.