South Asian Nations Meet to Combat Climate Threat to Himalayas

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.

Melting glaciers threaten 'Nepal tsunami'

Nepal —

Over two decades, Funuru Sherpa has watched the lake above his native village of Dengboche in Nepal's Himalayas grow, as the glacier that feeds it melts.

The 29-year-old, who runs a busy Internet cafe for tourists visiting the Everest region, remembers his grandfather telling him that 50 years ago the lake did not exist.

"Before, it was all ice," he told AFP in the eastern Himalayan town of Lukla, in the shadow of Mount Everest.

"This is proof that the glaciers in the high Himalayas are melting. And that must be because the temperatures have gone up."

Scientists say the Imja Glacier above Dengboche is retreating by about 70 metres (230 feet) a year, and the melting ice has formed a huge lake that could devastate villages downstream if it bursts.

The trend is not new. Nepal's International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which has studied the Himalayas for three decades, says many of the country's glaciers have been retreating for centuries.

But ICIMOD glaciologist Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya said this was now happening at an alarming speed, with temperatures in the Himalayas rising at a much faster rate than the global average.

"Our studies of the past 30 years show that the temperatures (in the Himalayas) are rising up to eight times faster than the global average. Melting is taking place higher and faster," Bajracharya told AFP.

"The melting of glaciers and formation of glacier lakes is a key indicator of the temperature rise. And lately, we have seen massive ice melt."

Nepal has more than 2,300 glacial lakes and experts say at least 20 are in danger of bursting.

At almost one square kilometre (0.38 square miles), the Imja lake is the country's second biggest, estimated to hold 36 million cubic metres (47 million cubic yards) of water, and is considered the biggest flood threat.

It is a subject close to the heart of Nepalese mountaineer Apa Sherpa, who has climbed Everest a record 19 times.

In 1985 Apa Sherpa lost his house and farm when the Dig Tsho glacial lake burst, causing a giant wave to flow down the mountain.

Seven people were killed by the flood, which swept away bridges and houses and destroyed a new hydropower station.

"For me, climate change is personal," said the climber, who dedicated his latest Everest expedition to raising awareness of the impact of climate change on mountain communities.

"There's probably no one who can relate to this issue in the way that I can."

Information about how many people would be affected by a glacial lake bursting remains limited, but experts say the floodwaters could reach as far as Nepal's southern planes and beyond.

Environment secretary Uday Raj Sharma said last week the bursting of the Imja lake would be like a "Nepalese tsunami," comparing it with the 2004 Indian Ocean disaster in which around 220,000 people died.

The government has asked international donors for help in tackling the hazardous glacial lakes, which will be discussed at regional talks here next week aimed at highlighting the dangers climate change poses to the Himalayas.

But experts say there are no easy solutions.

The mountain communities most at risk are often reluctant to leave their homes, while draining the lakes is expensive and dangerous and does not always work.

Ten years ago Nepal launched a three-million-dollar project funded by the Dutch government to lower the water level in the country's biggest glacial lake, Tsho Rolpa, in the eastern Himalayas.

The lake had grown from 0.23 square kilometres in 1957 to 1.65 square kilometres in 1997 and threatened villages and a major hydropower plant under construction downstream.

Engineers cut a channel 70 metres long and seven metres wide into the side of the lake and successfully lowered the water level, reducing the risk of it bursting its banks.

But ICIMOD's Bajracharya said the project was expensive and had only reduced rather than eliminated the risk of a flood.

"We spent three million dollars without actually solving the problem," he said, calling on the government to focus instead on creating awareness programmes and early warning systems for communities at risk.

Pasang Omo is a father of three who lives in the village of Shomare in the eastern Himalayas, which experts say would likely be wiped out if the Imja lake burst.

He agrees that the government has not done enough to help the mountain communities most at risk.

"Everyone comes to us and tell us a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood will sweep through our villages. But it doesn't do us any good," said Omo, 45, who works as a porter for trekkers.

"It?s like telling someone they are sick but not giving them a cure."

Climate change causing food shortages in Nepal

Global climate change and its effects on crop production threaten the food supply of millions of people in Nepal, an international aid agency warned Friday.

Nepal will likely suffer more frequent droughts because of climate change, Oxfam International said in a report released in Kathmandu. River levels will decline due to the reduced rainfall and glacial retreat, making it harder to irrigate crops and provide water for livestock.

"The predicted impacts of climate change will heighten existing vulnerabilities, inequalities and exposure to hazards," the report said.

More than 3.4 million people in Nepal are estimated to require food assistance, and food stocks in farming communities will last only a few months, it warned.

Meanwhile, environmental activists from China and India gathered in Beijing on Friday, saying the rapid meltdown of glaciers in the Himalayas threatens the water supply for two billion people.

With 100 days before the climate change summit in Copenhagen, Greenpeace, unveiled 100 melting ice sculptures of children to symbolize the "disappearing future" of the people in Asia.

The melting sculptures were made from Himalayan glacier water from the source of Yangtse, Yellow and Ganges rivers, Greenpeace said.

Denmark conference critical

"A climate tipping point is unfolding in the Himalayas. The rapid melting of glaciers caused by global warming is jeopardizing the water supply for 1.3 billion Asians who live in the watershed of the seven great rivers that originate in the region," the environmental organization said on its website.

"If we cannot stop runaway climate change, babies born today — at this moment — will face a very different reality when they grow up, where water availability would be a serious problem."

Vinuta Gopal, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said politicians who will meet in Denmark will have a duty to reach a substantial agreement because the water supply for two billion people is vanishing.

"Unless world leaders take personal responsibility at Copenhagen to ensure we have a strong deal, we are consigning the planet to catastrophic climate change," Gopal said.

But both China and India have refused to accept binding emission-reduction targets to sacrifice their economic development, arguing that developed countries were able to pollute for years.

Nepal plans to lift restrictions on recruitment of maids to Mideast

Nepal is considering lifting a ban on the recruitment of housemaids in the Middle East, said Mohammad Aftab Alam, the Nepalese Minister of Labour and Transport Management.

Alam who is in Dubai for the third two-day Non-Resident Nepalese (NRN) conference, said this would being done to counter unregistered recruitment agencies who get Nepalese women to the Middle East via neighbouring countries India and Bangladesh.

However, key Nepalese participants at the conference were of the opinion that prior to lifting the ban on housemaids, their government should ensure that Nepalese diplomatic missions in the Middle East were given the capacity to assist to Nepalese housemaids who approach the embassy in times of need.

Nepal opened an embassy in the UAE in 2004. It was then headed by a Charge d'Affairs, but a year and a half ago, Arjun B. Thapa was appointed as the first ambassador to the UAE.

There are 125,258 Nepalese citizens in the UAE. Of this number, 75,000 are in Dubai.

"We are encountering certain problems because of the non-registered agencies in Nepal who target women from villages.

"These women, when they end in a problem, approach our diplomatic missions. We are unable to track down the culprits who were behind recruiting them in illegal manner.

"By lifting the ban we will be able to streamline the recruitment of housemaids to this part of the world and will also be able to bring their agents to book if we come across an irregularities," said Alam.

The NRN conference will also serve as a curtain-raiser for the Global NRN conference that is scheduled to take place in October in Katmandu this year.

Ambassador Thapa said its was difficult to check monitor the illegally recruited Nepalese housemaids in the Middle East.

He said the embassy had received cases and had tried to solve them.

"It is often the case [that] victims, when they approach us, do not even know who had exactly recruited and sent them here to the UAE. As a result we are unable to get to the culprits and refer them to the law," Ambassador Thapa said.

He also added that Nepal facilitates orientation programmes for its nationals who travel overseas for employment.

'[The] majority of Nepalese in the UAE are employed as construction workers, security guards and in the hospitality sector," said Thapa.

A Nepalese citizen has to pay 70,000 Nepalese rupees (Dh3,352) to accredited recruitment agencies to register for an overseas employment. This amount is fixed by the government.