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Changing landscapes
NOV 20 - When Appa Sherpa climbed Everest for the 19th time this May, he felt it. Worried about the future, he placed a banner on the summit that read, ‘Stop Climate Change, Let the Himalayas Live’. On his way back, he picked up a rock that he had never seen before—because it had been buried under the thick snow-cover. Once in Kathmandu, he handed the souvenir—clearly a symbol of climate change in the Himalayas—over to the Prime Minister. During his recent trip to the U.S., Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal passed that rock on to the U.S. president Barack Obama, who reportedly showed his concern. And expressed his wish to go to Everest!
Obama did visit Asia this week, but couldn’t make it to Nepal or Everest. But despite the threats posed by climate change, Everest continues to stand tall in the central Himalayas, and it beckons the world. The mountain has been climbed at least 3,000 times, and it continues to lure thousands of climbers and visitors every year. But the changing landscapes of the Himalayas, the melting glaciers, the expanding glacial lakes, the changing vegetations, and the impacts that the changes are having on the web of life have been a matter of concern. More so as the UN’s Climate Change Summit due in Copenhagen next month draws nearer.
“We only have one Everest; we need to clean it, protect it,” said Appa in May.
Mountaineers like Appa may be concerned about the garbage littering Everest. That may be cleaned up. But the effects of climate change, propelled by global warming, appear irreversible. Between 1975 and 2000, the average temperature in Nepal increased by approximately 1.7 degree Celsius, a rate higher than the global average, say experts. In the high Himalayan region, the temperature increase rate is said to be highest, according to Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. The global phenomenon is triggered by never-decreasing carbon emissions, thrown into the ozone layer mainly by industrialised countries.
And this continues. Signs of climate change are everywhere. Himalayan glaciers continue to retreat as the snowline shifts higher; subtropical and temperate vegetations gradually shift higher, too; indigenous people worry about the arrival of new bug and plant species in the highlands; floods and landslides—triggered by unseasonable and erratic rains—turn increasingly unpredictable, as proven by the trail of destruction across the mid-hills and Gangetic plains during recent monsoons. Experts have also noticed unprecedented changes in agriculture and biodiversity.
Thulagi-bound
And so we went—a group of South Asian and British journalists—to see and possibly study the changes in the Himalayas, its foothills and the Gangetic plains before the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. As a freak cyclone pounded India’s west coast last weekend, thick clouds blanketed the Himalayas. But soon the clouds began dissipating, showcasing the majestic Himalayan peaks, now under a thicker cover of snow, thanks to the precipitous effects of the cyclone. The Dornier aircraft flew over central and western Nepal and into the Mustang valley before heading east across the Koshi River basin.
Hovering over the foot of the Annapurnas, the aircraft flew over the Modi, the Seti and the Maryashangdi valleys. Flying east—past the Begnas and Rupa lakes and Besishahar in Lamjung—we headed off to the west face of Mount Manaslu. As the plane got closer to snow-covered mountain, the journalists on board jostled for a space in the cockpit,
or the windows, to capture the rare landscapes, the river valleys, glaciers, glacial lakes, mid—hills, fields, towns, and
villages.
As the plane headed east of the Marshyangdi valley—past Besishahar, past the hydel plant—we saw the Thulagi glacial lake. Dark blue and small at first, the lake appeared deep blue and bigger as we got closer. Experts monitoring glaciers and the rather rapid rate of formation of glacial lakes in the Himalayas say Thulagi is one of the 20 glacial lakes identified as potential GLOF (Glacial Lake Outburst Flood) threat. Recently-formed lakes high up on the glaciers could burst in the event of an earthquake or other natural disasters, sparking disasters on the river basins, villages, towns and hydroelectric plants downstream.
En route to Mustang, we saw vegetations shifting upwards towards the snowline, and smaller glacial lakes on the south side of the Annapurnas as well. We also saw lush-green forests in the mid-hills, most of which looked denuded just a couple of years ago. Thanks to the success of community forestry in the hill areas, the mid-hill vegetation looks healthier, prettier. But in Mustang, we met farmers worried about the negative impacts of climate change on agriculture. “Apple farming has been badly affected here,” said Ananda Sherchan, former district chief and a resident of Jomsom. “Potato and buck-wheat farming isn’t good either.”
To Koshi
Flying over the mid—hills en route to the Koshi flood plains, we saw some rather disturbing sights of massive landslides. Once over the Koshi, we saw the river flowing calm—a far cry from the post-August 2008 inundation resulting from the breach of its eastern embankment. Today, the embankment looks perfect, and the 7,000 plus villages displaced by the inundation are back, picking up the pieces. Yet the threat of future floods and inundations looms large—both upstream of the 50-year-old barrage, as well as in downstream India.
The Sripur village is no longer inundated; it looks like a desert of white sand—now that the Koshi has been diverted back to its old course. Aravinda Khariyar, a villager says, all the displaced inhabitants are back. “But we are not happy,” he says, pointing at the damaged houses and the barren sand-land. “Our fertile fields are gone; we don’t have food to eat.” Adds his neighbour, Afsana Khatoon, “Winter is already here and we don’t have enough clothes...foreign donors have done a lot, but the government hasn’t done anything.”
One-and-a-half-years after the Koshi deluge, one thing is clear: natural disasters worsen the levels of poverty. With climate change, experts fear the worst. “We have no choice but to remain prepared for more disasters like the Koshi,” says Ngamindra Dahal, a climate change analyst. The most recent example of that “is the unseasonable floods and landslides that hit far-western Nepal in September.”
Bottomline
Experts are viewing Copanhagen as a staging point, not as an end point. It’s time the world’s mountain communities—from the Himalayas and the Alps to the Andes—got together and told the world that the impacts of climate change on the highlands are as evident and grave as in the coastlines, that the threats of floods and landslides are real, and that it’s time for concrete action. The inhabitants of the highest mountain range deserve much better. It’s time to cut the carbon and reverse the trend. It’s time to help communities adapt with the change.
(The writer is a BBC Nepali Correspondent)
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