UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged the world to “end the madness” of climate change as he visited parts of the Himalayas to witness the phenomenon’s devastating impact on the rapid melting of glaciers.
“The roofs of the world are falling,” Guterres said during a trip to the Everest mountain region of Nepal, noting that the country has lost nearly a third of its ice in just over a year of three decades.
“Glaciers are ice reservoirs: the glaciers of the Himalayas provide fresh water to more than a billion people,” he emphasized. “As they decrease, the river flow also decreases.”
Nepal’s glaciers have melted 65% faster in the past decade than in the previous decade, said Antonio Guterres, who is on a four-day visit to the country.
Across the vast Himalayan and Hindu Kush regions, glaciers provide an important source of water for an estimated 240 million people in mountainous regions and an additional 1.65 billion people in river valleys in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Glaciers support ten of the world’s major river systems, including the Ganges, Indus, Yellow River, Mekong and Irrawadi, directly or indirectly providing food, energy, clean air and income to billions of people.
Scientists say they are melting faster than ever due to climate change, exposing local communities to unpredictable and costly disasters.
“I am here today to shout from the top of the world: Stop this madness,” said Antonio Guterres from the village of Syangboche, with the icy peak of Everest, the world’s highest, behind him.
– “Catastrophe” –
“The glaciers are retreating, but we can’t. We must end the fossil fuel era,” he said.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world is on track to exceed the critical threshold of 1.5°C warming compared to pre-industrial levels by the early 2030s.
Global warming has caused a cascade of extreme weather impacts, including more intense heat waves, worse droughts and storms that are becoming more severe as sea levels rise.
Those hit hardest are the world’s most vulnerable people and poorest countries, which have contributed little to the fossil fuel emissions that drive global warming.
“We must act now to protect those on the front lines and limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees to prevent the worst climate chaos,” the UN chief said. “The world cannot wait.
Melting glaciers could trigger destructive flooding of “lakes and rivers that wash away entire communities,” the Portuguese added.
But if nothing changes, the glaciers will soon dry out, he warned. “In the future, large rivers” such as the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, which originate high in the Himalayas, “could significantly reduce flow rates,” he said.
“That would mean a catastrophe,” the United Nations chief said.
published October 30 at 4:29 p.m., AFP
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