KATHMANDU — Climate change is posing a threat to more than a billion people in Asia's Himalayan region as the alarming rate of the glaciers melting risking to dry up their water lifelines.
"Scientists predict that most glaciers will be gone in 40 years as a result of climate change," Prashant Singh, leader of the environmental group WWF's Climate for Life campaign, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday, December 6.
Glaciers in the Himalayas, which sweep through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, lifelines for 1.3 billion people.
But the rapid and alarming increase of temperature has dramatically accelerated the rate at which glaciers are melting.
"Most experts accept that temperatures are changing, and this is happening more rapidly at altitude," says Arun Shrestha, a climate expert at the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
Temperatures in the region have increased between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade for the last 30 years.
The ICIMOD warned that the current trends in glacial melt suggest flows in major Asian rivers will be "substantially reduced" in the coming decades.
"When the shortage arrives, it may happen abruptly, with water systems going from plenty to scarce in perhaps a few decades or less," it said in a recent report.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned that Himalayan glaciers could disappear altogether by 2035.
The UN will open on Monday, December 7, its much-awaited climate summit in Copenhagen with the participation of more than 100 world leaders and thousands of climate experts and campaigners.
It seeks a new pact for tackling greenhouse-gas emissions and their impacts beyond 2012.
Already Happening
Climate experts and campaigners say the effects of global warming are already being felt in the Himalayan region.
"Every time I go to the mountains the older Sherpas tell me this is the warmest year yet," Nepalese environmental campaigner Dawa Steven Sherpa told AFP.
In Nepal and Bhutan, the receding glaciers have formed vast lakes that threaten to burst, devastating villages downstream.
"Entire villages could be wiped out if one of the glacial lakes burst."
In China, studies have shown that the rapid melting of the glaciers will result in an increase in flooding in the short term.
In the longer term, it said, this would lead to a gradual decrease in river flows, severely affecting large parts of western China.
Experts cautioned that the resulting water shortages could hit the economic development of both China and India.
Even in low-lying Bangladesh, prone to severe floods, the IPCC expects rivers to run dry by the end of the century.
Campaigners are hopeful the Copenhagen summit could do something to save the Himalayan region.
"The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the Himalayan drainage systems who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty," Singh said.
IslamOnline
"Scientists predict that most glaciers will be gone in 40 years as a result of climate change," Prashant Singh, leader of the environmental group WWF's Climate for Life campaign, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday, December 6.
Glaciers in the Himalayas, which sweep through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, lifelines for 1.3 billion people.
But the rapid and alarming increase of temperature has dramatically accelerated the rate at which glaciers are melting.
"Most experts accept that temperatures are changing, and this is happening more rapidly at altitude," says Arun Shrestha, a climate expert at the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
Temperatures in the region have increased between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade for the last 30 years.
The ICIMOD warned that the current trends in glacial melt suggest flows in major Asian rivers will be "substantially reduced" in the coming decades.
"When the shortage arrives, it may happen abruptly, with water systems going from plenty to scarce in perhaps a few decades or less," it said in a recent report.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned that Himalayan glaciers could disappear altogether by 2035.
The UN will open on Monday, December 7, its much-awaited climate summit in Copenhagen with the participation of more than 100 world leaders and thousands of climate experts and campaigners.
It seeks a new pact for tackling greenhouse-gas emissions and their impacts beyond 2012.
Already Happening
Climate experts and campaigners say the effects of global warming are already being felt in the Himalayan region.
"Every time I go to the mountains the older Sherpas tell me this is the warmest year yet," Nepalese environmental campaigner Dawa Steven Sherpa told AFP.
In Nepal and Bhutan, the receding glaciers have formed vast lakes that threaten to burst, devastating villages downstream.
"Entire villages could be wiped out if one of the glacial lakes burst."
In China, studies have shown that the rapid melting of the glaciers will result in an increase in flooding in the short term.
In the longer term, it said, this would lead to a gradual decrease in river flows, severely affecting large parts of western China.
Experts cautioned that the resulting water shortages could hit the economic development of both China and India.
Even in low-lying Bangladesh, prone to severe floods, the IPCC expects rivers to run dry by the end of the century.
Campaigners are hopeful the Copenhagen summit could do something to save the Himalayan region.
"The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the Himalayan drainage systems who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty," Singh said.
IslamOnline
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