It’s 4,000 miles of mountains, seas and valleys from Kathmandu to Copenhagen. With changing climate, it could well become 4,000 miles of sudden storms, flood and climate migrations. Recognising that nations need to pool resources and expertise to face climate change impacts, South Asian countries came together for the first time earlier this week for a climate mini-summit in Kathmandu ahead of the Copenhagen meet in December.
Himalayan ecosystems are ‘the hotspots’. That’s the message from the two-day South Asian Regional Climate Change Conference. The region’s nations have “come to a bit of understanding” of the climate change challenges that transcend political boundaries, say environmentalists and policy makers. “It’s a big first step with a positive outcome,” M S Mani, environmental economist at the World Bank, told TOI on phone.
The mighty Himalayas are acutely vulnerable to climate change. “The Himalayas have been warming three times as fast as the world average and their glaciers are shrinking more rapidly than anywhere else and could disappear by 2035. The Ganges and Indus could become seasonal rather than year-round rivers,” recently wrote Newsweek’s science editor Sharon Begley.
As the source of most of the region’s major rivers, changes in Himalayan ecosystems can drastically alter the lives of more than the 700 million who live in the region. Lesser snow and fast-shrinking glaciers mean rivers becoming trickles and effectively India, Nepal and Bangladesh’s water sources drying up. At the same time, coastal areas like Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are threatened by rising seas levels.
While most climate summits gear towards ways to reduce carbon emissions and related negotiations, this one was an attempt to see how local communities must be helped to deal with the impact of climate change. “The Copenhagen summit is a different issue. Here, we looked at a synergistic approach to enhance ability of communities to cope with changing climate,” said joint secretary R R Rashmi, of the ministry of environment and forests in the Indian government.
The outcome is a 10-point statement. This spans the range of climate change issues from highlighting the Himalayas as a hotspot to filling knowledge gaps in mountain ecosystems, from pushing for finance of adaptation processes and clean technologies to enhancement of carbon stocks. “The Kathmandu meet recognised the Himalayan ecosystem as a hotspot and aimed to ensure the voice of South Asia gets reflected at Copenhagen,” says senior fellow at Tata Energy Research Institute, Prosanto Pal.
Nepal, added Mani, will carry the message to Copenhagen that South Asia “needs immediate action to address climate-change impacts in the Himalayan regions. That help can be in financing, in adaptation and technology transfers,” he says.