Himalayan region has big problems, few mechanisms to solve them
Posted on February 13th, 2009Lisa Friedman, E&E reporter
Leading social and environmental scientists yesterday called for scientific collaboration throughout the Himalayan mountain region to study the impacts of melting glaciers.
Suspicions among neighboring nations and the absence of a regional institutional mechanism have made the sharing of potentially critical information on issues like agriculture and water storage almost impossible, experts said at a panel hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ China Environment Forum.
“There are still places that scientists can’t go,” noted Isabel Hilton, founder of chinadialogue, a bilingual Web site focusing on climate change. Hilton noted, for example, that India refuses to share data on the Ganges River with China, while other sensitive border issues between those countries, as well as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and others that depend on the Himalayan Plateau, complicate needed scientific and policy collaboration.
“The glaciers are melting now, and there’s no rolling back the clock. So we need to start planning for what happens,” Hilton said. “We need to prepare now for that 40 percent of the world’s population that’s going to be affected.”
While scientists disagree on the pace and exact nature of glacier melt, several recent studies indicate that climate change has made the Himalayan mountain region into a climate hot spot. A Woodrow Wilson Center study released this week notes that air temperature in the Tibetan Plateau is increasing at a rate of 0.3 degree Celsius each decade, far faster than the global average.
The report warns that if temperatures rise 4 degrees Celsius, glaciers could melt on a global scale. That, in turn, would lead to severe flooding into the upper reaches of China’s Yangtze River and a lower volume of water in its downstream areas.
Glaciers are melting, but barriers to cooperation hold fast
The World Wildlife Fund has found that glacier coverage at the source of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers decreased about 15 kilometers between 1986 and 2000. Chinese scientists, meanwhile, have predicted that glacier retreat may cause a transformation in the pattern of rivers that feed the Yangtze, possibly decreasing the river’s natural runoff volume.
Kenneth Hewitt, who helped found the Cold Regions Research Centre in Waterloo, Ontario, injected a note of scientific skepticism. While China’s leading glacier scientist, Yao Tandong, has predicted that the country’s glaciers will disappear by 2050 and U.N. climate experts make equally dire predictions, Hewitt said that in some regions of the Himalayas, glaciers are actually advancing and thickening.
“It’s a very complex region,” Hewitt said, and cautioned policymakers and others against closing their eyes to scientific complexities.
“Sometimes we are looking for evidence that doesn’t rubbish the message, but science doesn’t do that,” he said. “When the evidence goes against the paradigm, we must be prepared to say that.”
Hewitt said he is preparing to work with Chinese glacier scientists in China and said he is optimistic about the effort and has found the country more willing than ever to share scientific information.