South Asian nations are discussing how to prevent climate change in the Himalayan mountains, the world’s highest range, bringing more natural disasters to an area where 750 million people regularly face floods and drought.
“This is the first time these nations are coming under one roof or a comprehensive platform to discuss and fight climate change,” said Mani Muthu Kumara, senior environmental economist at the World Bank and one of the organizers of the meeting in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. There is an “urgency for the whole climatic dialogue.”
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will be represented in Kathmandu, Kumara said by telephone from New Delhi.
The Himalayan mountains are the source of India’s holiest river, the Ganga, the Yangtze River, China’s longest, Nepal’s main river, the Karnali, and Pakistan’s longest, the Indus. Melting glaciers will reduce the flow of water to these waterways, threatening health, agriculture production and power projects and may lead to food and water shortages.
The rivers “supply the world’s most densely populated flood plains,” according to a statement on the conference Web site. “Climate change is predicted to increase the variability and frequency of extreme events in ways that are outside the realm of experience.”
The Himalayan range stretches 2,400 kilometers (1,488 miles) across Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
Copenhagen Conference
The two-day meeting, called “Kathmandu to Copenhagen” is a prelude to theCopenhagen conference in December, where an expected 192 nations will meet to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The accord set emission targets for developed nations and expires in 2012.
Fast-shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet- Qinghai Plateau may soon reduce water in rivers that irrigate regions producing grains and rice, saidLester Brown, president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, which studies environmental issues.
That may lead to food shortages and spark social unrest in China and more deaths from malnutrition in India, Brown said. Supply disruption in India or China, the world’s most populous nations and the top two producers of wheat and rice, could drive food prices higher around the world, he said.
Food shortages caused riots in Pakistan last year, a nation where, according to the World Bank, two-thirds of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Frequent drought, aggravated by a poor economy, weak infrastructure and food insecurity, poses a serious threat to communities in Afghanistan, the United Nations said in March.
Afghan Wheat
Afghanistan’s cereal harvest, especially wheat, will be the lowest since 2002 and the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund has earmarked $1.5 million to distribute wheat seed for this year’s planting season. Last year, rising food prices left 1.2 million children under the age of five at risk of severe malnutrition, according to the UN.
Food, water and energy shortages threaten India’s future and these should be addressed on a priority basis, Indian prime minister’s security adviser,Shekhar Dutt, said on Aug. 27. Inadequate rainfall this year has led to a drought in as many as 278 of the nation’s 626 districts, according to the farm ministry.
Rising sea levels are endangering the Maldives, the Indian Ocean island republic and its population of about 390,000 people and could disrupt economic activity for about 100 million people living in the coastal belt of South Asia, according to the Kathmandu conference Web site.
Water Shortages
Water shortages will be the order of the day in the region if glaciers melt at the current pace, Purushottam Ghimire, joint secretary and chief of environment division in Nepal’s Ministry of Environment, said in a phone interview from Kathmandu. “Hydropower generation will start suffering in Nepal, India and then other countries.”
Of the 720 megawatts of electricity Nepal produces a year, hydroelectricity accounts for 650 megawatts, Kumar Panday, general secretary of the Nepal Hydropower Association said from Kathmandu.
“The main focus will be on the Himalayan issue,” Ghimire said. “There will be a Kathmandu declaration at the end of the conference.”
The Kathmandu conference, which include representatives from China, won’t have anything to do with the broader government negotiations on climate change, the World Bank’s Kumara said. Kathmandu is just a lead up to Copenhagen, he said.
India, China
India and China, the world’s two fastest-expanding major economies, are key to a successful outcome in Copenhagen. India wants the U.S., Europe and other developed countries to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
Both countries would have to “respond very positively” if rich nations such as the U.S. agreed on reducing the levels, Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister said on Aug. 25 in Beijing, after meeting with Xie Zhenhua, China’s top climate change negotiator.
Meeting India’s negotiating stance would entail an overhaul of climate change laws in developed countries. In the U.S., legislation passed by the House of Representatives sets the goal of a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020.
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