The Himalay glacier is thinning and retreating…
That much is true. And the IPCCC report of it’s demise is still holding true. Albeit with a few decades of uncertain Life Extension projections and with a lot less scientific oversight and less measurement to uphold the validity of it’s delayed disappearance.
Yet the local people know the truth and the climate satellites are confirming it fully. The Himalay glacier is retreating faster than ever and soon will be history. Even Google-Earth can attest to the demise of the Himalay glacier…
That is if you care to observe the really raw data.
Yet without any agreement to curb global warming on sight, we are metaphorically upcreek without a paddle. We are falling fast in a soon to be dry river bed. Because literally when we lose the Himalay glacier we will also lose all hope for the Earth’s climate regulating monsoon weather systems, because these systems are reliant on the Himalay glacier to bring the seasonal regular weather and rainfall patterns. Precipitation globally and the annual crop sustaining doses of rain have come with an incredible regularity over the millennia allowing people to develop seasonal agriculture. Yet now the regular seasonal patterns and the mitigation of extreme weather which has been modulated by the Himalay highland glacial shelves is threatened. Unseasonal floods downstream from the Himalay glacier in Pakistan, Punjab, Bangladesh and Thailand and drought conditions for the rest of the year are but one example of this irregularity — killing any hope for a normal crop growing season through natural rainfall and precipitation in regular increments. It’s a vast unspoken and incoming misery. And with increasing global warming, not only we are losing the battle against the glacier loss but we are losing sight of what’s important to do here and now.
Please examine, the following three reasons for our current lack of optimism:
1) The current UN Durban conference of the UNFCCC is scheduled to go bust and the COP system is a conspicuous failure, creating a vacuum in global governance and an unmitigated disaster for all.
2) The UN process has failed us especially because the biggest CO2 polluters are refusing to have a climate change strategy, let alone a policy to address the incoming existential threat. And in the absence of any Climate deal and failing to get any international cooperation globally — there is little else to do but go directly to the participant countries and advise them to hang together and get the sandbags ready locally. Because ultimately only by standing together the vulnerable nations can at least mitigate some of the nastiest effects of this disaster and blunt the looming climate catastrophes for their own people.
3) And finally in the absence of a global agreement, the countries most affected need to sort out the short term remedies in order to mitigate the looming Climate catastrophes before their people fall victims to disasters like the Horn of Africa famines and worse. And certainly before their people become climate refugees again as it has happened many times in the past when the climate failed the water patterns and agriculture.
So for all the above reasons, the EP advises them to stand together or else fall apart completely. You can’t count on anyone else but yourselves and do not expect climate aid to cover anything for the short term disasters. Reconfiguring your economies and funding sustainable agriculture through farmer education is job one. Nothing else matters as much and the sooner one starts the more likely will be to address the change…
To that end, in a conference convened as a result of the work of the Environmental Parliament to bring together the Himalay glacier water reliant nations of Asia, four of the seven countries immediately bordering the Himalayan glacier have agreed to think of mitigation and adaptation solutions jointly. And far more importantly, their peoples have decided to come together to deal with the harmful effects that climate change is expected to bring to the region and especially with the disappearing Himalay glacier that will plunge them all in an eternal thirst.
After the “Wise-Up” round of conferences of the Environmental Parliament where all the custodial nations of the glacier were represented, now the immediate local nations are taking the initiative. It is now up to the leading actors: India, Nepal and Bhutan with a tiny delegation from Bangladesh, who met at the Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas to carry the torch. This mini conference took place in Thimphu, Bhutan where ministers spoke and decided to act jointly and develop a common voice. They seem to be getting the magnitude of the threat and now have agreed to work together on high level issues including food and water security. Nothing practical yet about the state of the glacier, besides high level speeches and theoretical pronouncements, yet the stage is set for more comprehensive talks in the near term.
But others must be included too. Notably Tibet. Tibet as the glacial host nation, is pivotal on this one issue not only as the vast glacial administrative region of China, but as a nation of various Peoples, all destined to play a very important role in this coming climate conflict and its resolution. Good or Bad outcomes, Tibet is where the Himalay glacier wars of survival, will be won or lost. And this will either mean hunger, thirst and wars for China and India — the world’s most populous countries — or survival mode living. But it will also mean disaster and vast trains of climate refugees for both and all other nations in the region too.
Because the Himalay glacier, is fragile and failing fast. Yet it is also far too big to fail. And this is precisely the mentality that causes us the deepest concern…
And because all of these fairly arid countries rely on melt water from Himalayan glaciers for their survival. And with recent temperature, rainfall and snow flows into the Indus river system, falling by 8 % – 10% and continuously declining further, things look rather dismal. Other rivers in the region will see even greater declines, leaving billions of people, vulnerable to drought according to the EP and seconded by many scientific studies and current articles published in the magazine of record Science. Science article DOI: 10.1126/science.1183188. Please keep in mind that the failing Indus river flow is the one which supports the world’s largest irrigation system and the Indian agricultural revolution, the miracle of Asia feeding it’s children…
And as the Himalay glacier itself is scheduled to go away completely this century, because of the current pattern of Greenhouse gas emissions continues unchecked, and the resulting global mean warming temperature of 5 degrees goes on, we are all going bust. With a warming planet, the global drought is inevitable and this is a simple enough modeling equation. And with 5 degrees of global warming projected, there will be nary a spot of ice, left in the Himalay glacier by 2050, thus driving billions of people off their land and homes in search of survival.
And unfortunately this is a dystopian scenario of a classic failed natural system all too often seen in human history. Only this time, there are far too many people involved and nobody can either reverse this trend, as it takes root… nor can feed the affected people. Clearly the glacier is a case of far too big to fail and yet falling… fast.
Still there is a whole lot that can happen and building vast and varied reservoirs is the best way we know to at least conserve water and maintain microclimates. Because even if we kill off the glacier generating the monsoons who in turn are regulating the weather patterns, we still need drinking and agricultural water. And building upstream dams with regional cooperation could help conserve water and control the flows, and even generate much needed electricity into the bargain, says Ruddy Wallace of the Environmental Parliament in London.
And this is a significant step forward for the region in general because the development work has to be done through sustainable renewable energy in order to alleviate the emissions currently burdening our planet and not add more CO2 in the warming atmosphere.
Historically, Himalayan countries have never worked together, because of regional conflicts driving divisions, recurring wars, religious strife and bloodshed. Yet today, it is clear that co-operation could be the only way to tackle climate change – especially as the upcoming UN climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, are not expected to produce a global treaty.
To have a lasting impact, though, the group will need to absolutely include China. Not only because China is the largest consumer of water the world over, and the thirstiest of all nations of this earth, but because it is also the most powerful regional player controlling upwards of 90% of the vast Himalay glacier with its annexation of the autonomous region of Tibet. And because the affected region includes all the countries who rely on the Chinese orientated Mekong river system and the seven Yunan rivers for their survival, the group has to be inclusive of the Indochina in total. Realpolitik demands this and the people who have studied simple history understand it well. All these countries are dependent for their survival on the glacier and have to be consulted before regional cooperation turns again into never ceassing conflicts. Therefore, the countries of Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and all other Indochia participants have to become parties to any agreement. And by inviting them sooner rather than later we have a better chance of a really menaningful deal.
And while we are at the crossroads of cooperation, one must include the contiguous countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh fully – where more lives are at stake because of the current lack of any scientific water management oversight and the religious conviction of fatalism that is preventing proactive thinking and nature altering intervention from being considered seriously…
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Yet there are bright rays of hope.
Because as the local wisdom has it the People are changing their habits…
And they change their water intensive agriculture already, but such adaptation mechanisms are rarely adaptive fast enough to counteract the disasters…
In Punjab the miracle of agricultural revolution is being reversed due to acidification of the lands and after this failure, the new method of sustainable non fertilized agriculture, takes root.
In Tibet many communities create primitively built glacial melt mini dams thus slowing down the melting glacier water flows. Agriculturalists are now seeking to protect their arid high plateau shelves and the high land pastures by protecting them from overgrazing. All the contiguous forests are now under some state of protection except those in Pakistan and Afghanistan…
And the Western nations are now looking at the climate models that link the closed loop atmospheric ecosystems to the Tibetan Himalay glacier as the pivot of the global weather patterns. The Earth Science community starts understanding that the Himalay Glacier is the centre of our climate stability and the global regulator of Monsoons and weather patterns long held as important for our seasonal agricultural lives and our seasonal climate temperatures.
Yet this is a long held wisdom that existed in the Tibetan culture for millennia. Religious or otherwise, the Tibetans are fully knowing that Mt Kalash is the centre of our world. And for that it is revered.
Now we thoughtful Westerners are waking up to the facts and we want to save the Glacier. But maybe it’s a case of too little too late without the two big climate changing bullies kissing and making up and agreeing to do something about it. America and China need to wake up, understand the issues at hand and spearhead the response…
Hopefully we will wake up before the dream turns to nightmare.
