UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday called on the world to “end the madness” of climate change during a visit to the Himalayan regions to examine the phenomenon’s devastating impact on the rapid melting of glaciers.
“The roofs of the world are falling in,” Guterres said during a trip to the Everest mountain region of Nepal, noting that the country has lost about a third of its ice in just over three decades.
“Glaciers are ice reservoirs: The glaciers in the Himalayas supply 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 last decade than the decade before, said Antonio Guterres, who is on a four-day visit to the country.
“I am here today to shout from the roof of the world: Stop this madness,” he said from the town of Syangboche, just behind him the summit of Everest, the world’s highest mountain.
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In the vast Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountain ranges, glaciers provide an important source of water for nearly 240 million people in the mountainous regions and for 1.65 billion people in the river valleys of South and Southeast Asia.
Glaciers feed ten of the world’s largest rivers such as the Ganges, Indus, Yellow River, Mekong and Irrawadi, directly or indirectly providing food, energy, clean air and income to thousands upon thousands of people.
The UN chief specified that melting glaciers could lead to destructive flooding of “lakes and rivers and the devastation of entire communities.”
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“The glaciers are retreating, but we can’t do that. We must end the fossil fuel era,” he added.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPEC), the world is on the verge of reaching the critical limit, set at a maximum rise of 1.5°C by 2030, since the beginning of the industrial era.
“We must act now to protect those on the front lines and limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees to avoid the worst climate chaos,” he said. “The world can’t wait.”