The silent disaster: How floods are rewriting North-East India’s ecological and agriculture future
It’s that time of the year when we see monsoon rains lashing across different parts of India. While rains play a significant role in India’s economic growth by powering the agricultural sector, each year we come across images of them also disrupting lives. Reports of rivers swelling beyond their banks, highways swallowed by muddy waters, inundated homes and economic centres have become commonplace during these months.
The North-Eastern region is particularly susceptible to the effects of monsoon rains due to the ecological vulnerability as a result of its geography and population. This year, in Assam alone over 1.3 million people have been affected with more than 10,000 hectares of cropland submerged due to unprecedented early floods in the months of May-June. While floods are an expected annual event in the region with rivers like Brahmaputra and Teesta making visible physical impacts, a quieter crisis is slowly rewriting the Northeast’s ecological and agricultural landscape.
Over the years, the unpredictable rains, their increasing frequency, erratic intensity, and consequent floods are showing up as symptoms of a rapidly warming planet. While physical damage captures eyeballs and grabs headlines, the much deeper ecological rupture gets overlooked and remains understudied.
Floods: A negative catalyst
Along Brahmaputra’s riverbank in Assam, a zillion instances of uprooted trees, washed away forests, eroding agricultural lands are observed every year. In Sikkim, the foothills witness something similar with rivers carving new paths and taking away the forests that act as buffers absorbing the impacts of heavy rains. In the absence of dense root networks, the force of repeated flooding has accelerated deforestation reclaiming large tracks of land year after year from farmers and forest dwellers.
Agriculture is the lifeblood of the Northeast region with over 80 per cent smallholder farmers practicing agriculture and allied activities, but floods are threatening that too. Floodwaters bring thick layers of silt degrading soil quality and disrupting planting cycles thus slowly turning large stretches of farmland unproductive. Nutrient loss, acidification and waterlogging in the field has led to many small farmers and indigenous communities to give up their traditional agriculture altogether.
These impacts are not limited to humans but also extend to the rich biodiversity of the region. In the deep lush forests that offer a breathtaking view from the outside, floods are tearing through natural habitats and wildlife corridors. This leads to the isolation and displacement of different species leading to more frequent human-animal interactions. Every year in Assam, we hear instances of human-rhino conflict increase during the flood season when they have to move away from low-lying areas.
For many communities, floods also pose a threat to their nutritional security as it forms a part of their everyday culture. For instance, the Mising community in Majuli, Assam, heavily depend on their kitchen homestead for essential food and medicines. During floods their lands get inundated leading to not just ecological but cultural loss thus threatening their sustenance. The lives and livelihoods of farmers, forest gatherers and indigenous communities get significantly affected due to floods pushing them into precarious alternatives leading to urban migration where they work as wage labourers to make ends meet. Here, floods don’t just disintegrate land-based livelihoods but also deepen inequality for an already vulnerable population.
Amidst all this, community-based adaptation models have emerged as an apt tool to showcase how climate resilient food systems lead to better life outcomes for the local population. The Balipara Foundation, working across the Eastern Himalayas has been pioneering a bottom-up approach of locally led adaptation initiatives to restore ecosystems and economies. They do this through rewilding, afforestation and agroforestry activities.
Communities take a lead in planning and planting native species on degraded lands and integrating agriculture with high-value crops like ginger and turmeric. They rely on traditional knowledge systems to revive degraded lands through indigenous soil management techniques like raised bed farming, bamboo drip irrigation, wet rice cultivation etc. Local seed banks help preserve seed varieties adapted to flood and drought and are slowly replacing chemical dependent hybrid varieties, wherever necessary. It’s a very inclusive model where women have emerged as key stakeholders – from managing nurseries to reforestation drives, women are reclaiming their role as the true custodians of land and water.
Why now?
Multiple researches have shown that extreme weather events are only going to intensify by 2030. The recent World Meteorological Organisation’s Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update (2025-2029) released in May has made predictions on increasing frequency of extreme events in the next five years. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change has also warned about extreme precipitation events in South Asia intensifying by 2030.
For Northeast India, this becomes an immediate threat because without building landscape level resilience, we can’t achieve economic and ecological resilience. In the upcoming COP30, discussion on indigenous knowledge is going to be an important agenda as the world recognises the need to push for locally led adaptation practices. If India is to fulfill its climate commitments, be it following Mission LiFE or the Panchamrit vision along with the National Adaptation Plan, it must first listen and learn from the wisdom and leadership of those on the frontiers and act before this silent disaster becomes irreversible.
The author is Founder Forester, Balipara Foundation
Published on August 2, 2025
