Cabinet will meet at the Mount Everest base camp this week to draw attention to the threat of climate change from melting glaciers and government efforts to protect the Himalayan environment.
The Everest meeting at Kalapatthar, 5,240 meters (17,192 feet) above sea level, follows one in October when the Maldives held an underwater Cabinet meeting to highlight the risk the low-lying island-nation faces of being submerged by rising seas.
Twenty-six ministers and aides will fly to Lukla in eastern Nepal on Dec. 3, then travel by helicopter to Kalapatthar for the meeting the next day, Nepalnews.com reported. Nepal, between China and India, is home to Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, and eight more of the world’s 14 highest peaks.
Global warming mainly caused by greenhouse-gas emissions is melting glaciers from Switzerland to the Himalayas, threatening water and food security for 1.6 billion people in South Asia, according to an Asian Development Bank study. Half of the Alps’ glacial terrain has vanished since the 1850s, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich.
The Himalayas are the source of India’s Ganges River; the Yangtze, China’s longest; Nepal’s main river, the Karnali; and Pakistan’s longest, the Indus. India and China possess more than 40 percent of Earth’s population and rely on rivers for drinking water and irrigation.
Nepal and the Maldives have felt compelled to use their endangered geography ahead of United Nations-sponsored climate talks that begin Dec. 7 in Copenhagen to publicize the threat that heat-trapping pollution causes developing countries.
Scuba Meeting
Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed and 11 ministers donned scuba gear to hold a meeting 4 meters under water last month in a lagoon, the British Broadcasting Corp. said.
The Maldives may be uninhabitable by the century’s end, scientists have said, based on forecasts of rising sea levels. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting in Antarctica and Greenland and ocean water occupies more volume the warmer it is.
The Everest meeting at Kalapatthar, 5,240 meters (17,192 feet) above sea level, follows one in October when the Maldives held an underwater Cabinet meeting to highlight the risk the low-lying island-nation faces of being submerged by rising seas.
Twenty-six ministers and aides will fly to Lukla in eastern Nepal on Dec. 3, then travel by helicopter to Kalapatthar for the meeting the next day, Nepalnews.com reported. Nepal, between China and India, is home to Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, and eight more of the world’s 14 highest peaks.
Global warming mainly caused by greenhouse-gas emissions is melting glaciers from Switzerland to the Himalayas, threatening water and food security for 1.6 billion people in South Asia, according to an Asian Development Bank study. Half of the Alps’ glacial terrain has vanished since the 1850s, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich.
The Himalayas are the source of India’s Ganges River; the Yangtze, China’s longest; Nepal’s main river, the Karnali; and Pakistan’s longest, the Indus. India and China possess more than 40 percent of Earth’s population and rely on rivers for drinking water and irrigation.
Nepal and the Maldives have felt compelled to use their endangered geography ahead of United Nations-sponsored climate talks that begin Dec. 7 in Copenhagen to publicize the threat that heat-trapping pollution causes developing countries.
Scuba Meeting
Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed and 11 ministers donned scuba gear to hold a meeting 4 meters under water last month in a lagoon, the British Broadcasting Corp. said.
The Maldives may be uninhabitable by the century’s end, scientists have said, based on forecasts of rising sea levels. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting in Antarctica and Greenland and ocean water occupies more volume the warmer it is.
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