An armed forces helicopter flies over the area of La Corona, which will be covered by a plastic blanket, on the Humboldt Peak in the Andes. It is the last glacier in Venezuela and will possibly disappear in less than two years. CREDIT: Harrison Ruiz / Minec

By Humberto Márquez
MÉRIDA, Venezuela, Mar 4 2024 (IPS)

Venezuela has undertaken the task of covering the remains of its last glacier, La Corona, on Humboldt Peak at 4,900 meters above sea level in the Andes mountains in the southwest of the country, with plastic “blankets” to slow the inevitable end of this icy patch of its mountain landscape and source of legends.

“We are not going to change the rhythm of nature, but we’re trying to curb the loss of the strip of glacier that we have left, for research and contributions that can be useful for other Andean countries where glaciers are also receding,” Toro Belisario, director of the Ministry of Ecosocialism (Minec) in the southwestern Andean state of Mérida, told IPS."A couple of dying hectares is all that remains of the nearly 1,000 hectares of glaciers that Venezuela had in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida at the beginning of the 20th century. They are the first victims of global warming." -- Julio César Centeno

The 1.8-hectare remains of the glacier will be covered with 80-meter-long polypropylene geotextile “blankets” brought from Italy in 35 rolls weighing 80 kilos each, which will be lifted by armed forces helicopters to the camp on the Humboldt Peak.

Some academics are opposed to the project, claiming that it has not been properly studied and that it is a vain effort to resist climate change and poses environmental risks for mountain species and rural and urban communities that could be polluted by plastic waste.

Belisario acknowledged that at the rate at which the glacier is retreating, one hectare per year, it has little life left, under the burden of climate change and the impact of the El Niño weather phenomenon blowing warm winds over the Pacific Ocean that alter the temperature in the region.

On the other hand, he defended the usefulness of the data that the initiative and its monitoring can provide month after month, for Venezuela and neighbors such as Peru, where numerous communities depend on glaciers as a source of water.

Perpetual snow disappeared decades ago from Bolívar Peak, Venezuela’s highest mountain at 4978 meters above sea level. Other glaciers in the Venezuelan Andes also melted during the 20th century. CREDIT: JC Centeno Chair

Environmental expert Julio César Centeno, a professor at the University of the Andes (ULA) in Mérida, told IPS that “the most that can be expected from the initiative is to prolong for a couple more years the final ordeal of the tiny, dying portion of the glacier that remains.”

Centeno and other ULA researchers warned in a press release that “it could cause environmental and ecological damage to the glacier and surrounding areas of the Andes highlands, as well as potentially affecting neighboring populations, due to air and water pollution from micro and nano plastics.”

The criticism asserts that Minec has failed to comply with current legislation, in terms of broad and informed consultation with local communities, presentation of an environmental impact study available to the public, and working together with concerned institutions, such as the university.

A century of retreat

“A couple of dying hectares is all that remains of the nearly 1,000 hectares of glaciers that Venezuela had in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida at the beginning of the 20th century. They are the first victims of global warming,” Centeno said.

This mountain range is in the center of the Venezuelan Andes – a 450 kilometer mountainous strip – with “perpetual snow” on its high peaks, Bolivar – 4978 meters above sea level, the highest in the country – La Concha, Toro, Humboldt and Bonpland.

La Corona glacier, between the Humboldt and Bonpland peaks, once covered 400 hectares, and even hosted a national ski championship. It has lost more than 99 percent of its original size, largely due to global warming. CREDIT: JC Centeno Chair

All of them have shrunk over the years, but in 1956 a national ski championship was held in the mountains. However, at the end of the last century only the La Corona glacier remained, on the Humboldt Peak, which with 400 hectares had also covered part of the Bonpland mountain, before losing 99.7 percent of its original extension.

Centeno explained that in countries such as Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland, glaciers are being covered with plastic blankets to reflect solar radiation and reduce energy absorption, but only during the summer months and especially in ski resorts. The costs are charged to the users.

There are also cases in Chile, China and Russia, and in most cases the glaciers to be covered are not only in latitudes far from the tropics but at lower altitudes than in Mérida, with more exposure to wind, sun and rain, which provide harsher conditions for the geotextile coverings.

This led ULA experts to warn of greater risks of deterioration of the tarps, and ruptures or tears leading to the spread of micro and nano plastics that the air and water would carry to agricultural and urban communities, such as the city of Mérida at the foot of the Sierra, with a population of around 300,000 people.

View of the city of Mérida, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. For centuries the regional capital has had an intense mythical, utilitarian and artistic link with its mountains. CREDIT: Espasa Mérida

Five white eagles

Since its foundation in 1558, the city has had a close relationship with its snow-capped mountains, ranging from enraptured contemplation to the utilitarian source of income provided by the highest cable car in the world, reaching from the city to 4765 meters above sea level in the Sierra.

In literature, the best-known reference is “The Five White Eagles”, which dates back to 1895, in which the humanist Tulio Febres Cordero (1860-1938) wrote down a legend of the Mirripuyes Indians, one of the groups that lived in the area when the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century.

The legend has it that five huge white eagles with silver wings flew over the mountains and Caribay, the first woman, daughter of the sun and the moon, fell in love with them and wanted the birds’ feathers to adorn her head.

Caribay ran along the ridges chasing the shadows of the birds but, when she was about to reach them, the eagles dug their talons into the cliffs and turned to stone, forming the five masses of ice that crowned the Sierra.

Since then, according to the legend, the occasional snowfalls are simply the awakening of the eagles, and the whistling of the wind in the highlands is an echo of the sad, monotonous song of Caribay as she fails to reach her silver trophy.

The governor of the state of Mérida, Jehyson Guzmán (R) receives the rolls of polystyrene, purchased in Italy, with which the La Corona glacier will be partially covered. Environmental academics are alert to the risk of eventual deterioration becoming a source of plastic pollution. CREDIT: Harrison Ruiz / Minec

Political presence

In justifying the plastic blanket project, Belisario said that “because of what this legend represents for the cosmovision of people from Mérida, we must not allow the glacier to disappear without contributing what we can to its study, and to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change.”

Centeno lamented that the eagles “no longer flap their wings, and their feathers no longer glitter. We all believed that because of their grandeur they were indestructible. They were swallowed by human indifference.”

In conversation with IPS, Ana Medina, a high school teacher in Mérida, and Yajaira Méndez, a shopkeeper in the municipal market, agreed that at home young people “must have once studied the legend of the white eagles” but that they are hardly aware of the end of the glacier.

“The people of Mérida love their mountains but have no information, and the glacier covering is not a topic that is talked about on a daily basis,” Euro Lobo, a veteran journalist in the city, told IPS.

Centeno said there may be political interest, in this year in which the country will hold a presidential election and it is expected that the current President Nicolás Maduro will seek reelection for a third six-year term.

“Perhaps the government wants to show that it is interested in saving as much as possible of the jewel that represents the last glacier for the city and the country,” said Centeno.

This monument to the Five White Eagles is on the outskirts of the city of Mérida. A legend written down in the late 19th century by writer Tulio Febres Cordero is a cultural icon. CREDIT: Samuel Hurtado / IAM Venezuela

Operation Protection

The governor of the state of Mérida, Jehyson Guzmán, of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and General Ruben Belzares, the area’s military chief, announced on Feb. 21 that the new phase of the “Operation Protection of the Humboldt Peak Glacier” began.

“This is about rescuing the last glacier in Venezuela, the last stretch of ice that nature donated in its landscapes to the Mérida territory. We are involved in the struggle to rescue, preserve and maintain it as far as possible,” said Belzares.

He pointed out that a helicopter has been prepared to transport material and equipment, and reconnaissance flights have been carried out near the summit.

Guzmán said that the first camp has been set up and its 26 members are ready to begin work as soon as weather conditions permit, since there was unusual snowfall for the end of February.

Since December the region has had high temperatures, “generating higher pressure on the glacier. That is why the deployment is important, because at this accelerated rate of heat at the end of the year we may not have any glacier left,” said Guzmán.

He reported that in the Sierra Nevada all types of burning and logging have been prohibited, as well as climbing with spiked shoes.

He also specified that the geotextile blankets will not be placed directly on the entire glacier, but in the surrounding areas where the ice sheet is weakening, where melting has been the most accelerated.

The final flapping of the wings of the last of the eagles will occur under a polystyrene blanket.

Cayetano Huanca, who lives near the Ausangate glacier in the department of Cuzco in Peru’s Andes mountains. In just a few years, the snow and ice could be gone, something that has happened on other glaciers in the country. Credit: Oxfam

By Milagros Salazar
LIMA, Dec 12 2014 (IPS)

Snow-capped mountains may become a thing of the past in Peru, which has 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers. And farmers in these ecosystems are having a hard time adapting to the higher temperatures, while the governments of 195 countries are wrapping up the climate change talks in Lima without addressing this situation facing the host country.

Some 100 km from a glacier that refuses to die – the Salkantay mountain in the department of Cuzco – there is a monument to passion fruit, which hundreds of local farmers depend on for a living, and which they will no longer be able to plant 20 years from now, according to projections.

The monument, which is in the main square in the town of Santa Teresa, near the famous Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, shows a woman picking the fruit and farmers carrying it on their backs, cutting the weeds, and hoeing.“It’s important to assess how the retreat of the glacier affects the local population, to know how they can adapt, because the loss of these snow-capped peaks is irreversible.” -- Fernando Chiock

That scene frozen in time reflects real life in Santa Teresa, where passion fruit (Passiflora ligularis) grows between 2,000 and 2,800 metres above sea level. But due to the rising temperatures, farmers will have to move up the slopes. And once they reach 3,000 metres above sea level, they won’t be able to plant passion fruit anymore.

“There is a strong impact in this area because the locals depend on the cultivation of passion fruit for their livelihoods,” environmental engineer Karim Quevedo, who has frequently visited the Santa Teresa microbasin as the head of the agro-meteorology office of Peru’s national weather service, Senamhi, told IPS.

That microbasin is one of the areas studied by Senamhi as part of a project of adaptation by local populations to the impact of glacier retreat. The glacier that is dying next to the town of Santa Teresa is Salkantay, which in the Quechua indigenous language means “wild mountain”.

Salkantay, at the heart of the Vilcabamba range, supplies water to local rivers. But in the last 40 years the glacier has lost nearly 64 percent of its surface area, equivalent to some 22 sq km, according to the National Water Authority (ANA).

“It’s important to assess how the retreat of the glacier affects the local population, to know how they can adapt, because the loss of these snow-capped peaks is irreversible,” the head of the climate change area in ANA, Fernando Chiock, told IPS.

Both Chiock and Quevedo said it was crucial to take into account the direct effects on the local population and to prioritise funding to mitigate the impacts, at the end of the COP20 – the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – whose final phase was attended by leaders and senior officials from 195 countries.

Monument to passion fruit in the town of Santa Teresa – a crop that local farmers will no longer be able to grow 20 years from now because of the rise in temperatures in this mountainous area of Cuzco in Peru’s Andes. Credit: Courtesy of Karim Quevedo

COP20, which began Dec. 1, was scheduled to end Friday, but is likely to stretch to Saturday.

“What is yet to be seen is how to bring what is agreed at this climate summit to the ground in local areas. One of the challenges is to form connections between the big treaties,” Quevedo told IPS in Voices for the Climate, an event held near the military base in Lima, known as El Pentagonito, where COP20 is being held.

The outlook is alarming, experts say. Since the 1970s, the surface area of the 2,679 glaciers in Peru’s Andes mountains has shrunk over 40 percent, from more than 2,000 sq km to 1,300 sq km, said Chiock.

Some glaciers have already completely disappeared, such as Broggi, which formed part of the Cordillera Blanca, the tropical mountain range with the greatest density of glaciers in the world, which like the Vilcabamba range forms part of the Andes mountains.

Around 50 years ago, Broggi was retreating at a rate of two metres a year, but in the 1980s and 1990s the pace picked up to 20 metres a year.

In 2005, monitoring of the mountain stopped because the surface of the glacier, equivalent to signs of life in a human being, disappeared completely.

Today, glacial retreat in Peru ranges between nine and 20 metres a year, according to ANA. At the same time, the melt-off has given rise to nearly 1,000 new high-altitude lakes, Chiock said.

In the short-term, the appearance of new lakes could sound like good news for local populations. But according to the ANA expert, these new sources of water must be properly managed, to avoid generating false expectations in the communities and to manage the risks posed by the lakes, from ruptured dikes.

Chiock explained that safety works are currently in progress at 35 lakes that pose a risk.

There is a sense of uncertainty in rural areas. New lakes appearing, glaciers dying, hailstorms destroying the maize crop, unpredictable rainfall patterns, heavy rains that affect the potato crop, intense sunshine that rots fruit, insects that hover like bubbles over a boiling pot.

“The climate patterns have changed,” Quevedo said. “You can’t generalise about what is happening; each town or village faces its own problems. But what is undeniable is that the climate has changed.”

Some crops have been affected more than others. With the high temperatures, potatoes have to be planted at higher altitudes because they need cold nights to flourish. In some areas, coffee benefits from intense sunshine, but in others the plants suffer because they also need shade.

The influence of the climate on crops is 61 percent, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

“These minor climate events are the ones that cause the greatest damage to the population, and they are the most invisible to the international community,” Maarten Van Aalst, the director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, who took part in the COP20, told IPS.

He said it shouldn’t take a hurricane sweeping away entire harvests, like in Haiti in January 2010, for governments to sit up and take notice.

But hopes are melting that they will do so before COP20 comes to an end here in Lima.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Tourism is adding to the strain on natural resources in Leh. Credit: thar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
LADAKH, India, Sep 24 2013 (IPS)

The Ladakh of today is a different world from the one Skarma Namgiyal remembers as a child. Back then, he had taken for granted the breathtaking beauty of its landscape, the purity of the cold mountain air, and the sweet taste of water in its streams.

Today, at 47 years of age, this resident of Tukcha village in Leh district in the north of Kashmir cannot believe they are digging borewells for water, using water to flush toilets in their homes in place of the dry toilets they had been accustomed to, and having to cope with sewage flowing right up to their houses.

Climate change, booming tourism and modern practices are wreaking havoc in this high altitude cold desert in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state. The average elevation in Ladakh is 11,000 ft above sea level and temperatures swing between minus 35 degrees Celsius in winters to 35 degrees in summer. Annual rainfall in the region is less than four inches.

Earlier, water from the melting glaciers would be enough to cater to the needs of the locals, Namgiyal tells IPS. But with less snowfall and warmer summers, some of the glaciers have vanished altogether while others too are fast melting.

“Look at Khardongla,” says Namgiyal’s neighbour Tsering Kushu. “It used to be a huge glacier. It is not there anymore.”

GERES India, the Indian wing of the Paris-based environmental organisation, had in 2009 done a baseline survey of Ladakh, based on an analysis of meteorological data from 1973 to 2008 and interviews with older villagers. Its results showed glacial retreat in every part of Ladakh, most notably in Khardongla and Stok Kangri, the first north of Leh and the latter to its southwest.

“Trend analysis clearly indicated a rise of the order of nearly one degree Celsius for all winter months,” says the survey.

“Snowfall and rainfall too have showed a decreasing trend in the studied period,” Tundup Angmo, under whose guidance the survey was carried out, tells IPS.

Kushu has another barometer for gauging the hotter summer. “Now you can see people using refrigerators and ceiling fans in their homes,” he says.

Ladakh itself has a population of 280,000, according to the 2011 census. In addition, tourist arrivals have vastly increased from the trickle that began when the Indian government first opened the region to tourism in 1974.

According to figures with the state tourism department, Leh had received 100,179 tourists by the end of August 2013. “The number of arrivals has been less this year because of the increase in air fares,” Mehboob Ali, assistant director for tourism in the Ladakh region, tells IPS.

To cater to its visitors, Leh has 511 hotels and guest houses. “It is growing very fast,” says Lobzang Sultim, executive director of the environmental NGO Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG).

LEDeG is conducting a survey titled Urban Water Health Project which was started in October 2012 and will end by March 2014. According to the initial findings of the survey, 375 hotels in the town are extracting 852,000 litres of water a day. Sultim also says that almost 60 percent of Leh’s 20,000 households are using borewells to draw water.

“We have no choice but to draw water from borewells as the piped water supply is available for just one hour in the morning,” Manav Thakur, the general manager at Hotel Lingzi in Leh, tells IPS.

All this is putting pressure on Ladakh’s already scarce water resources, and with no means to replenish them, the water table is falling rapidly.

“We are already aware that precipitation in Leh is quite nominal,” says Sultim. “And with the decrease in glacial melt, stream discharge is also decreasing, making the recharging of the water table very difficult.”

LEDeG is working on means to conserve water and regenerate groundwater resources. “We are planning a project in which we will divert some of the surface water and allow it to travel slowly to ensure seepage of water to the water table,” says Sultim.

Another negative trend that is straining Ladakh’s water resources is the replacement of traditional dry toilets with water flush toilets. All of Leh’s hotels and guest houses have water flush toilets now, though a few also have dry toilets. A few households too have installed water flush toilets.

Dechen Chosto, a housewife in Leh town, is not one of them; her family is happy using a dry toilet. “They need no water, don’t stink and the compost can be used in our agricultural fields,” Chosto tells IPS.

Dry toilets, indeed, are ideally suited for Ladakh’s cold climate, says Sultim. “They are easy to use in the winter here when everything else except the blood in the body freezes,” he adds.

“We cannot afford the luxury of water flush toilets,” says Tashi Tundup, an executive engineer in the public health engineering department in Leh. “Though I am all for change and want people to benefit from modern facilities, I am a strong votary of continuing with dry toilets in Leh,” he tells IPS.

Leh had so far not felt the need for a sewage system. However, with the growing number of hotels and guesthouses, sewage and waste from these establishments is flowing right into people’s backyards and even into the Leh stream which runs through the town.

“They not only cause problems for people living in the lower parts, but are also contaminating our water,” says Rigzin Dorge, a resident of Sheynam, a village in the area. “We were better off with our own dry toilets.”

LEDeG is now urging people to return to eco-friendly ways. “During our interactions with foreigners, we found that some of them had actually used dry toilets,” says Sultim. “This made us realise that our guests will respect our traditions if we ourselves retain them.”

The organisation is now planning to publish posters and pamphlets to spread awareness about continuing with traditional practices.

Maryam Akhtar, a farmer in Kashmir, worries the taps will not yield enough water for her family's daily needs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.

Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.

Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.

Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.

“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.

Most residents of this lush valley, nestled between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, are unaccustomed to drought. For generations subsistence agriculturalists have relied on steady rainfall and glacial rivers to irrigate their farmland, but now this scenic alpine region is feeling the pinch of climate change.

The most recent State of the Environment Report (SOER), released by the Directorate of Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing in the capital, Srinagar, says that all its monitoring stations across Kashmir – except Jammu, which is located 290 km away from the capital – recorded a decreasing trend in total annual rainy days.

A number of other studies carried out in recent years corroborate these findings, adding that glaciers in the Kashmir Himalayas are receding, while snowfall and precipitation are both showing decreasing trends.

A study by Norwegian scientist Andreas Kaab and his French colleagues, which was published by Nature Magazine in August last year, found that increasing temperatures in the region posed no immediate threat to glaciers in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalayas (HKKH) except to those in the Kashmir Himalayas.

Kaab’s findings suggest that Kashmir’s glaciers may be receding by “as much as half a metre annually,” presenting an immediate threat to the rivers that feed the Indus basin.

Jhelum, the largest river in the region, originates in South Kashmir and is fed by glaciers in the upper reaches of the town of Pahalgam. One of the river Jhelum’s primary tributaries, the Lidder, is fed by the Kolhai glacier, which is receding fast.

Quoting a study conducted by Kashmir University’s geography department, Department Head Mohammad Sultan Bhat informed IPS that, since 1975, precipitation in the lower parts of Kashmir has declined by 1.2 centimetres in lower altitudes and eight cm in higher altitudes.

These trends, say experts, bode badly for the future of Kashmir’s agricultural industry: according to figures in the most recent Kashmir Economic Survey, only 42 percent of agricultural land in Kashmir is covered by irrigation facilities like canals and lift stations, while the remaining 58 percent is entirely dependent on rainfall.

Following the enforcement of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act in 1959, over 9,000 landowners were stripped of over 100,000 hectares of land, which was transferred to peasants, thereby creating an agrarian-based economy in Kashmir.

Over 80 percent of the population is now dependent on agriculture for a livelihood, cultivating such crops as rice, maize, pulses, saffron and potatoes.

Official statistics indicate that 75 percent of agricultural land – roughly 46,943 hectares – is under paddy cultivation in Kashmir, indicating that rice farmers comprise the bulk of agriculturalists here.

Early this year, scientists from the earth sciences department at the Kashmir University revealed that increases in temperature and a considerable reduction in precipitation would result in a sharp decrease in paddy yields across the region.

Earlier this year, renowned scientists Shakil A. Romshoo and M. Muslim presented a paper at the Indian Science Congress in New Delhi, predicting that rice production would decrease by 6.6 percent (over 4,000 kg per hectare) by 2040.

According to Romshoo, these projected declines are based on predictions that maximum and minimum temperature will increase by 5.39degrees Celsius and 5.08degrees Celsius respectively by 2090.  Precipitation levels are likely to decrease by about 16.67 percent by 2090.

Most farmers in Kashmir earn roughly 1,900 dollars a year and produce an annual average of 40 quintals (4,000 kgs) of paddy per hectare. Experts say these farmers will struggle to withstand the decrease in yields that will undoubtedly accompany the predicted weather changes.

Already countless families are feeling the pinch of decreasing water supplies. Nasreena Begum, a mother of three children living in the village of Surigam in the northern Kupwara district, spends several hours every morning walking over a kilometre to fetch water from a stagnant pond, since the stream that once bordered her village has completely dried up.

She told IPS she makes the trek several times a day in order to collect enough water to meet her family’s daily needs.

In addition to drinking and washing water, she must also ensure that the family cow is properly watered, since her children rely heavily on the cow’s milk for nourishment and she herself sells five litres a day to the local milkman in order to supplement her husband’s meagre earnings as a daily labourer.

As the rains become thinner, and the glacier-fed rivers slow to a trickle, she and many other farming families will be forced to hunker down to weather a hotter and drier Kashmir.

(END)

Experts warn that climate change is responsible for melting glaciers on the Himalayas. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
JHIRPU PHULPINGKATT, Nepal , Jun 2 2013 (IPS)

Residents of Jhirpu Phulpingkatt, a village nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, about 110 km from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, are on red alert.

As the impacts of climate change batter the towering mountains above them, these villagers on the banks of the Bhote Koshi river have started to dread the sound of incoming text messages, which may carry evacuation warnings.

Their fears are not unfounded. Research conducted by experts from the University of Milan shows that the snowline in the Everest region of the Himalayas, also known as the Khumbu region in the northeast of Nepal, has receded by 180 metres in the last 50 years, while glaciers have shrunk by 13 percent.

Last week all eyes were on the Himalayas’ highest peak – 29,000-foot Mt. Everest, whose summit is bisected by the China-Nepal border – in honor of the 60^th anniversary of the first human ascent of the mountain.

But the momentous occasion presented as much cause for panic as for celebration, when images showing bare rock jutting out from under the receding ice caps called attention to the rapidly changing face of this majestic range.

Sudeep Thakuri, who led the Italian team of researchers, told IPS that the continuous and increased melting is most likely caused by rising temperatures, which were 0.6-degrees Celsius higher this year than they have been in previous years.

Together, the two phenomena have led to the proliferation of massive glacier lakes – melting ice held back by natural dams of moraine and debris – that could spell disaster for those living in the rocky ravines down below.

Avalanches, erosion, heavy water pressure and even snowstorms could cause glacial outbursts, “releasing millions of cubic metres of water in a few hours (resulting in) catastrophic flooding downstream”, according to a study by Germanwatch, an NGO dedicated to sustainable development.

Glacier lake outbursts are not uncommon, and over the last century scientists have recorded at least 50 incidents of these icy lakes breaking their dams. One of the most devastating incidents occurred when the Sangwang Cho glacial lake in Tibet burst in 1954, flooding the cities of Gyangze (located 120 km downstream), and Xigaze (about 200 km away).

Now experts warn that the lakes are filling up faster than ever before and new lakes are being created at an alarming rate.

“If climate warming continues, as is predicted, accelerated glacial thinning and retreat are likely,” Pradeep Mool, programme coordinator at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, told IPS, warning that “the danger posed by glacial lake outburst floods will increase.”

According to ICIMOD research, there are over 20,000 glacial lakes in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, stretching from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar (formerly Burma) in the east.

The Dudh Kosi river basin in eastern Nepal is home to 278 glaciers, some of which are receding at a rate of 74 metres annually. Mool told IPS that the region is now home to 34 lakes, including 24 recent formations, of which ten have been tagged as potentially dangerous.

Mool warned that earthquakes also pose a serious threat. “The Hindu Kush Himalaya region is one of extreme seismic instability. Earthquakes could act as major triggers for glacial lake outbursts,” he stressed.

There has been at least one reported lake outburst in the last 500 years in the Seti Khola region that was triggered by seismic activity, the scientist said. That outburst produced a 50-metre-high debris field in the western region of Pokhara.

According to Thakuri, the future wellbeing of glaciers is largely dependent on the climate, adding that much more concrete scientific research is required to determine possible outcomes.

But those living in the Himalayan foothills, like the villagers of Jhirpu Phulpingkatt, say there is evidence enough of the possible disasters to come.

The steep mountain walls in this village, mostly covered in lush vegetation, are frequently disrupted by deep cave-ins caused by earth slips that follow heavy rains.

At the small power plant that lies just next to the Bhote Koshi river, officials rely on a warning system to give residents adequate notice to escape any lake outbursts.

However the plant’s acting manager, Janak Raj Pant, told IPS that the warning would only give an escape window of between six and 10 minutes, and extends only to the Nepali border, which is just 10 km from the plant. But many of the glacial lakes that could impact this village and others lie in Chinese-controlled Tibet, where the warning system does not reach.

ICIMOD’s Mool told IPS there is an urgent need for better monitoring of lakes and their water levels. He pointed to a few isolated examples in which outlets have been cut into the dams of some glacial lakes in Nepal and Bhutan to let out excess water, but Mool said such preventive action needed be more uniform.

There is also an economic imperative to take action, at least in the Bhote Koshi valley, where Nepali authorities are planning to build at least four new power plants on the river.