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Imagine a collaboration between Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and Afghanistan. It sounds nearly impossible, but they all seek help to solve a common problem: The Himalayas are changing and everyone fears the consequences.
The Himalayas, which are often called "The Roof of the World", contain some of the most extensive and rough high altitude areas on Earth as well as the greatest area of glaciers and permafrost outside of the poles. Ten of Asia's largest rivers flow from here, and more than a billion people's livelihoods depend on them. To complicate matters further, temperatures are rising more rapidly here than the global average. In Nepal the temperature has risen with 0.6 degree over the last decade, whereas the global warming has been around 0.7 over the last hundred years.
About a week ago I visited ICIMOD, International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, which is a development and learning center for the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya mountain range, and helps mountain people adjust to the changing environment.
Madav Karki is a small, smiling man with a big mission. International collaboration is necessary to meet problems both locally, downstream and globally, insists Karki.
The mountain people in the Himalayas are some of the poorest in the world and they have already lost much of their previous water resources and agriculture. We've now seen and smelled rivers considered dead, spoken to people who had to wait for hours for water, whose children were lying half-dead sheltered from the sun. An underlying cause is the melting of the glaciers that feed these rivers, but I have so far been unable to actually see one.
A major reason for the lack of scientific data and reporting from the Himalaya glaciers is that they are so literally hard to reach. The closest glacier is a two-day hike by foot from the nearest road and the area is both cold and short on oxygen. ICIMOD helps scientists, politicians and decision makers to understand the problem and, if all goes well, Karki will also help us get close to one of Himalaya's biggest hot zones.