Save the Himalayas

Call for the attention of the global community to focus on the perils of climate change on the Himalayas, a global heritage site of Nepal.


Save the Himalayas

The enthralling beauty of the majestic Himalayan Mountains has inspired awe and religious devotion in people around the world for millennia. They have been the objects of adoration, and centers of religious homage. With most of the eight-thousanders rising here %u2013 including the majestic Everest, the crown of all- the Himalayas, the youngest of the mountain systems, dwarf all other mountain ranges. The lofty Himalayan mountains continue to challenge the spirit and contribute to the human experience.

The Himalayan mountains, sprawling across 2,700 km in Pakistan, India, Nepal, China, and Bhutan, contain the greatest area of glaciers and permafrost outside the polar area, encompassing about 15,000 glaciers. Feeding the ten largest rivers of Asia like the Ganges, Indus, Huang Ho, the Greater Himalayas are the water towers of Asia. Together, the basins of these ten rivers provide livelihood to 1.3 billion people. The Himalayas possesses an abundance of ecological riches, from subtropical to arctic climates, and support vast numbers of flora and fauna.

Apart from the majestic beauty of its landscape, the Himalayan region plays an important role in global atmospheric circulation, biodiversity, and water resources, and provides ecological services. The Himalayas regulate the climatic regime in the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan plateau by preventing the frigid, dry arctic wind in the north and forming the barrier for the warm monsoon winds in the south. The Himalayas%u2019 effects in climatic regime are felt far and wide.

A large number of tenacious people residing in the Himalayan mountains and the river valley have over centuries carved out diverse cultures. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia. The lofty peaks and the mighty rivers flowing from the Himalayas have inspired the rise of early civilization and support mosaic of cultural diversity today.

The lofty Himalayas and the region, which have all along been playing an important role in climatic regime regulation, are now themselves facing the perils of climate change. Several recent scientific reports have shown that the temperature is rising in upper reaches of Himalayas at an alarming rate of 0, annually - several times more than the global average. This rate of higher than average warming in the Himalaya puts the already fragile mountain ecosystem and its marginalized community at a greater risk.

The impact of global warming in the Himalayas is not localized; it spreads far and wide, up to the sea and coastal region, affecting a vast number of ecosystems and millions of people. Although contribution of the people living in the Himalayan region to global warming is negligible, they are the early victims of its effect, and have to bear the brunt of it.