WULAR LAKE, India // Tucked within Kashmir’s Himalayan foothills sits a freshwater lake that was once among Asia’s largest. Long an inspiration to poets, beloved by kings, Wular Lake has been reduced in places to a fetid and stinking swamp.
Just the sight of it makes Mohammed Subhan Dar feel sick. He admits he is partly responsible.
Mr Dar was among dozens of villagers employed in the 1950s by the regional government to plant millions of water-sucking willows in the crystalline lake. The goal had been to create vast plantations for growing firewood and timber for construction and cricket bats. The result was the accidental near-destruction of the lake, as trees drank from its waters and their tangled roots captured soil, building up land.
The lake, now less than half of its former capacity, no longer churns and heaves with high waves, but meanders across mossy swamps and trash-strewn backwaters. Children long ago stopped playing in the water. Families no longer use it to cook.
“It used to be so beautiful, so clear you could see the bottom,” said Mr Dar, whose family has lived lakeside for seven generations. Needing a job, he alone planted at least a hectare of what is now a full-blown willow forest. “I feel ashamed every day.”
As Wular lost its appeal, its value declined. Poverty rates in the 31 surrounding villages shot up to around 50 per cent – five times the state average.
Kashmir and New Delhi officials now want to repair some of the damage by felling millions of trees and dredging parts of the lake. But restoring an enormous alpine lake is no simple thing, especially with climate change threatening the Himalayan glaciers that feed Wular’s waters, and deforestation still unleashing soil to again clog it up.
Restoring a lake in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where a decades-long violent conflict often supersedes all other government plans, may be near impossible.
Wular’s surface lies flat, lifeless and in some spots stagnant, teeming with mosquitoes. The water trickles in from the Jhelum River, and meanders some 16 kilometres before emptying through a dam on its way toward Pakistan.
The name Wular itself means “stormy” in the Kashmiri language, and once described the lake’s strong winds and choppy waters. For centuries, it was considered a paradise by writers, nobles and travellers who camped along its banks.
Mohammed Azim Tuman remembers a boyhood spent steering his houseboat by moonlight over towering waves.
“My heart would be racing as I clung to the railing to keep from falling into the water,” said Tuman, the elderly proprietor of a tourism business. “When a storm hit, the water would splash so high I thought, ‘My god, the boat will be swallowed whole.”’
The surface and surrounding marshlands have shrunk from 216 square kilometres in 1911 to just 104 sq km in 2008.
Along the fringes, impoverished communities tend rice paddies and in autumn harvest wild water chestnuts from the lake shallows.
The ornately carved wooden houseboats that once surfed Wular’s waves are gone.
“It’s typical throughout India, not just in Kashmir. The critical balance between ecology and economy that is missed,” said Anzar A. Khuroo, assistant professor of biodiversity at the University of Kashmir in Srinagar.
Since 1990, the planet has lost 75 per cent of its wetlands as communities drained the water and built on the land. That often comes with economic losses, because wetlands provide services including water filtration, flood control and wildlife support.
In 2008, Wetlands International came out with an US$82 million (Dh300m) plan to restore Wular’s ecology, estimating the costs could recouped within 12 years from timber profits, improved fish stocks and an expected 40 per cent boom in eco-tourism.
The Indian government was intrigued. Some experts suggested it could be done more cheaply.
In 2011, India’s parliament approved a $26m budget. Officials began talking about water sports, five-star hotels and riverside parks.
If only it had been so easy. A host of players needed to get on board: individuals, villages and several state government bodies including forestry, farming, fisheries, pollution control and the army.
It took years just for them to agree on the lake’s boundaries. The project was again re-evaluated. The budget dropped to $2m.
By the time the first willows were chopped down, it was 2015. Only half the budget was allocated, and those in charge knew it was not enough.
Still, they chopped and dredged. They removed about a million cubic meters of silt — or 200,000 truckloads — before federal funding expired.
Whether the project can survive now is debatable. Any further work will need a new proposal, environmental assessment and much more money. The programme’s manager Rashid Naqash estimates it’ll cost about $280m.
Yet the willows are not the only problem. Lake-clogging soil and silts are being loosed from newly deforested lands far upstream, and scientists also warn that climate change is upsetting Himalayan rainfall patterns.
“I don’t think the government has an understanding of how difficult this work would be,” said Himalayan geologist and glaciologist Shakil Romshoo.
*Associated Press
What is the FNC?
The Federal National Council is one of five federal authorities established by the UAE constitution. It held its first session on December 2, 1972, a year to the day after Federation.
It has 40 members, eight of whom are women. The members represent the UAE population through each of the emirates. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have eight members each, Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah six, and Ajman, Fujairah and Umm Al Quwain have four.
They bring Emirati issues to the council for debate and put those concerns to ministers summoned for questioning.
The FNC’s main functions include passing, amending or rejecting federal draft laws, discussing international treaties and agreements, and offering recommendations on general subjects raised during sessions.
Federal draft laws must first pass through the FNC for recommendations when members can amend the laws to suit the needs of citizens. The draft laws are then forwarded to the Cabinet for consideration and approval.
Since 2006, half of the members have been elected by UAE citizens to serve four-year terms and the other half are appointed by the Ruler’s Courts of the seven emirates.
In the 2015 elections, 78 of the 252 candidates were women. Women also represented 48 per cent of all voters and 67 per cent of the voters were under the age of 40.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
States of Passion by Nihad Sirees,
Pushkin Press
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
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COMPANY PROFILE
Initial investment: Undisclosed
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Core42
Current number of staff: 47
SPECS
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The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The specs: 2018 Opel Mokka X
Price, as tested: Dh84,000
Engine: 1.4L, four-cylinder turbo
Transmission: Six-speed auto
Power: 142hp at 4,900rpm
Torque: 200Nm at 1,850rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L / 100km
