India’s oldest mountain range is being carried away.
Residents film the trucks. Complaints get dismissed. A satellite’s timestamp
does not. Pick a place, pick two years, and watch what the ground lost.
Why the Aravallis matter
The range is a living barrier holding back the Thar Desert. The Government of
India’s Aravalli Green Wall Project covers a landscape of
over 6 million hectares across Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat
and Delhi, explicitly to “prevent eastward expansion of Thar
Desert” and the dust storms and desertification that follow.
Delhi and Gurugram sit directly downwind of it. Every hectare buried under
debris is a hectare of that barrier taken out. That is what this tool measures.
Source: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change,
Press Information Bureau, 25 Mar 2023