Glacier melt speeds up:danger for asia

CANCUN, Mexico – The lives and livelihoods of people in South Asia are at "high risk" as global warming melts glaciers in the Himalayas, sending floods crashing down from overloaded mountain lakes and depriving farmers of steady water sources, U.N. and other international experts reported Friday.Worldwide, "since the beginning of the 1980s, the rate of ice loss has increased substantially in many regions, concurrent with an increase in global mean air temperatures," the U.N. Environment Program said.Glaciers in southern South America and Alaska's coastal mountains have been losing mass faster and for longer than glaciers elsewhere in the world, it said.
The new U.N. assessment of recent glacier research was issued at annual climate talks, where delegates were expected, once again this year, to fail to reach agreement on long-term mandatory action to rein in emissions of global warming gases.
"These alarming findings on melting glaciers underline the importance of combating climate change globally," said Norway's environment minister, Erik Solheim, whose government supports the glacier research. "It sends a strong message to us as politicians and climate negotiators in Cancun."In their second and final week, a spirit of compromise seemed to have settled over the talks, but negotiators were expected, at best, to agree only on secondary tools for coping with global warming, laying the groundwork, for example, for a "green fund" of $100 billion a year by 2020.Financed by richer nations, the fund would support poorer nations in converting to cleaner energy sources and in adapting to a shifting climate that may damage people's health, agriculture and economies in general.The Himalayan nations of Nepal and Bhutan will need such support, as they try to cope with melting glaciers by siphoning off water from swelling glacial lakes. The work is costly and difficult in remote, high-altitude locations, UNEP said.

Posted in: