( CNN ) -- As the source of the Ganges River , the site of Hinduism 's famous Char Dham pilgrimage and home to Rishikesh , the meditation retreat made famous by The Beatles , the India 's northern Uttarakhand state justifies its title of `` Land of the Gods . '' But environmentalists are warning that rampant development in the Himalayan state is tempting fate . With roads built on an ad hoc basis , new hotel developments built on river banks and hydro dams proposed in the region 's steep valleys , environmentalists say the floods and mudslides that have claimed more than 1,000 lives in the past week were an ecological catastrophe waiting to happen . `` You 've heard of homicide , well this is ecocide , '' Devinder Sharma of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security told CNN . `` The hills have been shorn of the forest cover , there 's extensive mining taking place in this region and on top of that the roads that are being constructed are haphazard . `` And the hydro projects coming are phenomenal -- 70 hydro projects back to back . Obviously there are tunnels being built , hills being blasted and everything goes topsy-turvy . `` We are playing with nature but at the same time blaming nature . '' He said while a massive national road-building program had been well received by India 's state governments , routes had been planned through increasingly remote areas without adequate drainage , exacerbating the problems of coping with massive run-off from the region 's monsoon rains . A real estate boom in the region has also resulted in new developments going ahead without adequate planning permission . `` It 's a classical model of disaster , '' he said . `` If you want to see globally what can happen in regions like the Alps or the Rocky Mountains or elsewhere you only have to take a look at Uttarakhand . '' Souparno Banerjee of the Indian advocacy group the Center for Science and Environment said that despite state government denials , most experts were of the view that unregulated development and unregulated tourism is responsible for the scale of the disaster . `` Development is important but we need to keep in mind the very delicate eco-system that you 're working within , '' he said . `` The Himalayas are the biggest mountain range in the world but they are also extremely fragile . `` You need to keep that in mind when putting disaster management plans in place . '' He said his organization recommended a certain amount of flow necessary to keep rivers in the region at a safe level , but that dam projects and river diversions for roads had backed up with flood waters from torrential rains . `` The drainage in many areas is half-baked , '' he told CNN . Uttarakhand 's chief minister Vijay Bahuguna told the Times of India newspaper that the floods had set back the state by at least three years in terms of development . `` My people are going to suffer because tourism is going to be affected . We have to put the infrastructure back on the rails . I have written to the prime minister that preliminary reports suggest there is loss of Rs 3,000 crore ( US $ 500 million ) . This tragedy has broken our economy , '' he said . He said that a balance needed to be struck between the environment and development , adding that he did not want migration away from Uttarakhand . `` Seventy percent of my state is forest cover . ( If ) I am preserving my forests for the nation then why do n't you give me compensation ? Let the country compensate us . '' He denied that the disaster was man-made and a result of the indiscriminate construction of hotels and houses . `` This is a very childish argument -- that cloudbursts , earthquakes and tsunamis are caused by human factors . In the history of hundreds of years of Kedarnath ( a region of the state ) , no such incident has taken place . In a Himalayan state , this catastrophe has come about in 37,000 square miles of area . This cloudburst , 330 millimetres of rain , can not be anticipated . ''
Environmentalists blame rampant development for high death toll in Uttarakhand . They blame hydro projects and ad hoc road building for exacerbating the problem . Massive Hindu pilgrimages every year strain resources in the Himalayan state . Score: 6