PESHAWAR: The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental knowledge and learning center in eight regional member countries of Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH), has revealed changes to the glaciers, snow and permafrost of the HKH region driven by global warming as “unprecedented and largely irreversible.”
This startling revelation was made by ICIMOD in its report launched on Tuesday on `Water Ice Society and Ecosystems’ in the Hindu Kush Himalaya.
“The Water, Ice, Society, and Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HI-WISE) report draws on recent scientific advances to map out for the first time the linkages between cryospheric change (snow, ice, and permafrost), with water, ecosystems, and society in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region,” reads a press release shared by ICIMOD with media persons.
The peer-reviewed study warns of grave consequences to the region which provides freshwater services to a quarter of the world’s population and is home to four global biodiversity hotspots.
The study finds that Himalayan glaciers disappeared 65% faster in the 2010s than in previous decade, the glaciers could lose up to 80% of their current volume by end of this century, availability of water in the Hindu Kush Himalaya is expected to peak in mid-century, floods and landslides are projected to increase over the coming decades.
“Effects of the changing cryosphere on fragile mountain habitats are particularly acute,” the report sums up.
Scientists involved in the study research, predict devastating consequences for water and food security, energy sources, ecosystems, and the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across Asia, many of which will be beyond the limits of adaptation.
The report warns policymakers need to prepare for the cascading impacts of climate change in the critical mountain biome, which will affect a quarter of the world’s population.
Urgent international support and regional cooperation now vital for inevitable, near-term loss and damage, and to help communities’ adaptation efforts, it suggested.
The study also warned that communities and governments need urgent support and finance to prepare for the accelerated impacts on societies and nature that cryosphere changes will cause as temperatures rise, with current funding flows to the region woefully insufficient to the scale of the challenges the region will face.
“With two billion people in Asia reliant on the water that glaciers and snow here hold, the consequences of losing this cryosphere are too vast to contemplate. We need leaders to act now to prevent catastrophe,” commented Izabella Koziell, Deputy Director General ICIMOD.
Ice and snow in the Hindu Kush Himalaya are an important source of water for 12 rivers that flow through 16 countries in Asia, providing freshwater and other vital ecosystem services to 240 million people in the mountains and a further 1.65 billion downstream.
“There is still time to save this critical region, but only if fast and deep emissions cuts start now. Every increment of a degree of warming matters to glaciers here and to the hundreds of millions of people that depend on them,” Izabella suggested. —APP
