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Understanding glacier changes (1)

Kenneth Hewitt — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:25:00 +0000

Reports about the melting – and advancing – of Himalayan glaciers have sparked heated debate. In the first section of a three-part article, Kenneth Hewitt warns against oversimplification.

[Download Kenneth Hewitt's full report here]

Glaciers are quite sensitive to climate change and, recently, there have been many reports of major changes in the Himalaya and other parts of High Asia; mostly of glaciers retreating fast. Impacts of a range of glacier hazards, and on the reliability of water resources, are of concern at local, national and transnational scales. However, there is also a growing recognition that glacial conditions in the region are very diverse, and so are their responses to climate change.

There are some very different implications in different societal contexts, not least in relation to rapid socio-economic changes, water resource projects and security crises. The latter are often more urgent or immediate problems that disrupt or undermine peoples’ capacities to adapt to environmental change. Such complexities are the focus of this article. The reality of climate change is not questioned, but some recent oversimplifications are, and claims about a narrow range of glacier hazards. In particular, unresolved problems of understanding high altitude glaciers and climate are emphasised, and the inadequacies of available information and monitoring. Recent evidence of glacier advances in the Karakoram Himalaya, and the author’s work there, illustrate many of these complexities.

Ablation zone conditions where annual ice losses are high: dust, dirt and scattered debris areas on Kaberi-Kondus Glacier, late June, at 4,000 metres above sea level. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt 1998)

Globally, most glaciers are reported to be diminishing more or less rapidly. Reports of “disappearing glaciers” have come from many parts of High Asia. However, this is not the case in the upper Indus and upper Yarkand River basins. Here, the glaciers have been holding their own for several decades and recently, in the Karakoram Himalaya, many have started thickening and advancing. Not only is this opposite to the broader picture for Eurasian glaciers, but also to what had been happening to Karakoram glaciers. Through most of the twentieth century they too diminished and retreated. There is no question that today’s behaviour is a regionally distinct response to climate change. It may sound like good news, given the dominant lament for the loss of glaciers, but that too would be misleading. Advancing glaciers bring dangers as well.

The surge of the Maedan tributary of Panmah Glacier. Notice severe crevassing of ice. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt, June 2005)

Of immediate concern are a number of glaciers on the Indus and Yarkand Rivers, whose past advances gave rise to large ice dams and catastrophic outburst floods. In the longer term, existing and planned water resource uses, dependent on glacier-fed streams or at risk from glacial floods and sedimentation, are of major concern. However, the largest challenges stem from inadequate information and monitoring, and limited scientific understanding of these high elevation glaciers. Misleading or exaggerated reports based on assumption rather than evidence are also a problem. Some high profile reports have suggested that the Indus basin is in imminent danger of losing its glaciers. Glacier hazards, notably “dangerous lakes” associated with retreating ice in other regions, have been assumed to be equally present in the Karakoram. The reports are simply wrong in this case.

Meanwhile, if the main trend in most of High Asia does seem to be glacier retreat, various lines of evidence show that it is occurring at very different rates in different mountain ranges, even within the same mountains. A 2006 survey of 5,020 glaciers in the mountains of western China and the Tibetan Plateau found widely differing rates of reduction. It also found 894 glaciers, about 18%, have advanced in recent decades. The jury is still out on a 2009 report from India [pdf], which questions the scale and reality of the extreme rates of retreat formerly reported for the Himalayas, and projections based on them.

None of this is to suggest that climate change is not a serious issue in the Karakoram. In every valley of the region farmers tell me the winters have grown shorter in the past couple of decades, there is less snow and more rain. They report an increase in windstorms and rain during summer. Formerly, clear, sunny weather in autumn was reliable and perfect for drying grain, fruit and winter fodder, and for post-harvest chores around the villages. Not any more. They report increasing problems with damp and mildew from insufficient drying days. Rain and wind threaten the harvest and damage buildings. These are, in fact, more immediate hazards for the mountain communities than anything that may be happening to the glaciers. This refers to the inhabited areas at lower elevations, where more, and more severe, rainstorms have been reported in recent years, notably a disastrous storm on September 9, 1992. It triggered rockfalls and debris flows that damaged many villages, closed most roads and stranded tourists. Again, advancing glaciers are also a response to climate change – and are not necessarily good news.

Although there have been reports and discussions of Karakoram glaciers since the mid-nineteenth century, they have been patchy in space and time and of varying quality. The glaciers are not, and have never been, consistently monitored. Few glaciers anywhere in the inner Asian mountains meet the criteria of the World Glacier Monitoring Service, and hence have not been tracked by it. The cries of concern for these glaciers should at least highlight the need for more reliable data and a better grasp of climate-glacier interactions in the world’s highest mountains.

Panmah Glacier accumulation zone, showing surrounding rock walls up to 2,500 metres high around the Latok Peaks, June 2005. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt, 2005)

The glacier cover of High Asia exceeds 110,000 square kilometres, the number of identifiable glaciers more than 50,000. There are major concentrations in about a dozen mountain ranges, forming watersheds of all the major rivers of the central, south and south-east Asian mainland. The Upper Indus and Yarkand basins have around 21,000 square kilometres of glaciers, the larger fraction in the Greater Karakoram, or about 16,500 square kilometres. Most of the biggest valley glaciers outside polar regions are found here. While there are more than 5,000 individual glaciers, just 12 make up almost half the ice cover. Melt waters from glacier basins comprise more than 40% of the average annual flows of the Indus and the Yarkand, with a potential to affect the lives of some millions of people downstream. While there was a roughly 10% reduction of the Karakoram ice cover in the first 60 years of the twentieth century, no significant reduction has occurred in recent decades and, as noted, many glaciers are undergoing advances.

One must qualify the notion that threats only arise from “disappearing” glaciers or in proportion to the rate of reduction. This is certainly a cause for concern, in itself or in what it implies about humanly induced atmospheric changes. But growing glaciers are not necessarily benign. In most glacierised mountains, certainly the Karakoram Himalaya, the worst consequences experienced in recent history came with the enlarged ice cover of the Little Ice Age: a period of several centuries, ending just over 100 years ago, when glaciers grew throughout the northern hemisphere. From those events come most of the stories and fears about glaciers recalled in Himalayan towns and villages. The considerable reduction of the glaciers observed between about 1910 and the 1960s was, in effect, removing ice stored in the Little Ice Age, a process that is not yet complete. Today’s glaciers are larger than a few centuries ago. Meanwhile, the evidence of advances in the Karakoram not only indicates a different response here to changing climate. It raises the prospect of a return to the hazards of advancing ice not seen since the Little Ice Age.

NEXT: Factors underlying regional variance

Kenneth Hewitt is professor emeritus in geography and environmental studies and research associate at the Cold Regions Research Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.

Homepage image by Kenneth Hewitt shows the upper Chiring-Panmah Glacier in 2005 and illustrates the prevalence of steep rock walls in the upper parts of these glacier basins.

[Download Kenneth Hewitt's full report here]

Understanding glacier changes (2)

Kenneth Hewitt — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:04:00 +0000

How are glaciers affected by climate change? In the second segment of a three-part article, Kenneth Hewitt explains regional variance.

[Download Kenneth Hewitt's full report here]

As we saw in part one, climate change is obviously having different consequences in different mountain areas of Asia. The situation in the Karakoram must represent some distinctive conditions. Three features of the regional environment seem critical. The first two relate to snowfall and the nourishment of these glaciers. They are intermediate in type between the summer accumulation (snowfall) glaciers of the greater Himalayas, and the winter accumulation glaciers of, say, the Caucasus and European Alps to the west. In each of the latter, more or less strong glacier retreat is reported. Second, the zone of maximum precipitation in the Karakoram is much higher than in these and most other mountain ranges. It is also entirely within the accumulation zones of the glaciers. This relates to the third factor, the exceptional elevations and, especially, elevation range of these ice masses.

The glaciers of large and intermediate size originate at very high altitudes and many of them descend much lower than elsewhere in the sub-tropics. Five glaciers span more than 5,000 metres in elevation, 15 over 4,500 metres and more than 30 over 3,000 metres. In the Hunza valleys of the central Karakoram, glacier termini advance below 2,300 metres above sea level. Those on the north flank in the Yarkand drainage do not descend so low because the valleys are at greater elevations, but they include several descending more than 4, 000 metres, due to location in the very highest parts of the range around K2 (8,610 metres). All of the glaciers recently observed to be growing are in these high-relief basins. Of special interest, but poorly understood, is how elevation and topography interact with the regional climatic influences to determine the behaviour of the glaciers.

The regional climate of this south-western part of the Inner Asian mountains comes under the influence of three different, seasonally varying, weather systems. First, the winter half of the year is dominated by a westerly or “sub-Mediterranean” circulation. Second, in summer, moisture comes from the Indian Ocean to the south and the climate becomes “sub-monsoonal”. Third, inner Asian high-pressure systems, especially involving the Tibetan Plateau, interact with the other two systems to affect storm paths and the incidence of clear weather. The last is critical, since direct solar radiation is responsible for 80% to 90% of melting on the glaciers.

Global climate change is expected to alter the absolute and relative roles of all three systems, a likely factor in recent developments that complicates forecasting of future glacier changes. Meanwhile, investigations on the glaciers at higher elevations have revealed how different conditions are from the valley weather stations – mostly below 3,000 metres above sea level – whose records had dominated climatic interpretations.

Station records from the inhabited areas of the Karakoram show two-thirds or more of precipitation occurs in winter, mainly February through May. The average annual precipitation in these valleys is 150 millimetres to 300 millimetres water equivalent – an arid or semi-arid environment with severe summer drought. However, a very different story emerged from our measurements on the glaciers in the 1980s. At elevations above 4,800 metres we found that snowfall amounts are roughly the same in summer and winter, with roughly equal amounts coming from the west and the Indian Ocean. Summer drought was not observed on the glaciers especially in their accumulation zones above 4,500 metres above sea level.

Moreover, the zone of maximum precipitation turned out to be between 5,000 metres and 6,000 metres above sea level – much higher than in, say, the eastern Himalaya or any other reports from tropical mountains. Moreover, accumulation zone snowfall is equivalent to between 1,000 millimetres and 2,000 millimetres of water; far more moisture than the valley stations suggest. What is identified here is a powerful gradient in climatic conditions with elevation – a five- to 10-fold increase in precipitation from glacier termini around 2,500 metres above sea level, to where the snow falls that nourishes the glaciers. A recent, pioneering study based on satellite imagery – conducted by Bibi S Naz and colleagues at Purdue University in Indiana – suggests snowfall amounts and the extent of perennial snow cover have increased in the past couple of decades at high elevations in the Central Karakoram.

Summer storm on the Baltoro Glacier at 4,600 metres above sea level, at the limit of rain(below) and snowfall (above). The exceptional height to which there was rain seems to reflect climate warming. However, at the height of the ablation season the storm virtually shut down melting here and greatly reduced it lower down. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt August 2005)

Vertical gradients also define key conditions for the melting of the glaciers, and their contribution to water supply. In fact, although many ice tongues descend much lower, the decisive conditions for melting occur between 3,800 metres and 4,800 metres above sea level. Here lie more than 80% of the ice surfaces where melting occurs in summer. Ablation conditions – under which ice melts – also identify complexities that arise with timing and seasonal rhythms as well as elevation. Nearly all the melting and water production of the glaciers occurs in just a few weeks of summer, when temperatures rise above zero and strong sunlight occurs. In turn, this explains why 70% to 80% of the flow of the upper Indus and Yarkand rivers occurs in six to 10 weeks of summer – usually in July and August – lagged until winter snow sitting on the ablation zone has melted away to expose the ice.

Moreover, melting is very sensitive to summer cloud cover or storms. A sudden summer storm can shut down melting for days at a time. Just when and for how long rapid and extensive melting occurs varies greatly from week to week, and year to year. It is one of the most sensitive variables affected by climate change.

Middle ablation zone of Biafo glacier after the first winter snowfall in October, 2009. The main glacier is over 500 metres thick here and 3.5 kilometres wide. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt 2009)

Another huge and poorly understood fact is that most Karakoram glaciers are largely or wholly avalanche-fed. The accumulation zone areas of these glaciers, above about 4,600 metres above sea level, are generally 70% to 80% steep rock walls. The larger part of high altitude snowfall in the region is on to these unstable slopes, and is avalanched more than 1,000 metres before incorporation into a glacier. It seems likely that changes in snowfall amounts, with season or in storm intensities, will alter the timing, temperature relations, and extent of avalanching. This can, in turn, affect glacier behaviour. The trouble is, there are no data or research to help predict what climate change does to this all-important part of the nourishment of the glaciers.

All-season avalanches that descend to the surface of Barpu Glacier are the main way ice is nourished. This one falls more than 2000 metres, is two kilometres wide and will travel several kilometres down the glacier. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt. August 2006)

What can be said is that what happens between 3,800 metres and 7,000 metres above sea level is absolutely critical to the role of climate and climate change in glacier behaviour and survival. These are also the elevations where the reasons for the seemingly anomalous recent responses of Karakoram glaciers must be sought. However, it is here that the least research has been done. There are no permanent measuring stations or long-term monitoring. To recognise how unfortunate that is, we need to address changes that are, or may become, unusually threatening to human communities and activities.

NEXT: Risks and responses

Kenneth Hewitt is professor emeritus in geography and environmental studies and research associate at the Cold Regions Research Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.

Homepage image by Kenneth Hewitt shows icefall on Charakusa Glacier, east-central Karakoram in June, 2005.

[Download Kenneth Hewitt's full report here]

Understanding glacier changes (3)

Kenneth Hewitt — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:07:00 +0000

Whether expanding or retreating, changes in the planet’s glaciers pose dangers for humans. In the conclusion of a three-part article, Kenneth Hewitt explores these risks.

[Download Kenneth Hewitt's full report here]

Glaciers and their immediate environs present many dangers for humans, such as crevasses and glacier mills into which one might fall, heavily crevassed ice falls, snow and ice avalanches from the side walls and, along the flanks, dumping of great boulders, ponding and floods from melt water. For these reasons, there are hardly ever permanent settlements on or right beside the ice. These are hazards mainly to mountaineers, hunters, travellers and military expeditions. The more serious dangers arise from processes in the glacial environment that may extend their impacts beyond existing glacial areas. The more serious tend to involve ponding of water that leads to glacial outburst floods, or releases that generate debris flows.

Heavily debris-covered ice, Panmah Glacier Central Karakoram, around 4,000 metres above sea level. Note that even the heaviest debris on active ice is rarely more than 2 metres thick. The relief of mounds and cones is almost entirely ice cored and the debris is constantly shifting around. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt, June 2009)

The risk of glacier lake outburst floods has received particular attention in other parts of the Himalaya, notably Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. In Nepal, some 25 glacial lake outburst floods have been recorded since the 1930s, with especially destructive events in 1985 and 1991. Bhutan also has a number of dangerous lakes, one of which burst with disastrous consequences in 1994. Reports suggest all of these lakes and the triggers for outburst floods are related to climate warming and glacier retreat. There is also a history of such outburst floods from Karakoram glaciers. However, the problem here is also very different from that recently reported elsewhere in the Himalayas. In particular, the most serious threats involve, specifically, much larger impoundments by short-lived, unstable ice dams. Crucially, all recorded examples have been associated with advancing glaciers.

In fact, the Karakoram presents two rather different groups of outburst floods. The most frequent are relatively local events. Collectively, they threaten dozens if not hundreds of small settlements in the higher valleys and examples occur in most years. They involve a wide variety of dam compositions, forms and outburst types, including ice, moraine, and mixed-barriers. Conversion of outburst floods into debris flows is quite common, usually the more severe risk. For the upper Indus, these are the only types of damaging outburst floods reported in the past several decades. Moreover, they occur whether glaciers are advancing, retreating and relatively stable. Conversely, the larger Karakoram dams involve impoundment of a main river valley by a relatively large tributary glacier. Most important, in the present context, these dams only form from a vigorous forward push of the ice.

A series of ice margin lakes along Nobonde Sobande arm of Panmah Glacier, central Karakoram seen from Drenmang (4,500 metres above sea level). Some are behind old lateral moraines, others ponded against the edges of active ice. The glacier is about two kilometres wide here and 10 kilometres of the main ice stream are visible. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt 1994)

More than 60 glaciers of intermediate-to-large size (10 kilometres to 65 kilometres in length) have a history of advancing into and interfering with tributaries of the upper Indus and Yarkand rivers. Not all are known to have created actual dams, but at least 30 have done so and involved outburst floods of exceptional size and destructiveness. However, while there have been several large dams recently on the Shaksgam, on the Indus the last major ice dam was in 1933. “Major” refers to outburst floods that were large enough to register hundreds of kilometres downstream at the river gauge at Attock, where the river leaves the mountains.

The most urgent questions today involve some Karakoram valleys whose glaciers created ice dams and catastrophic outburst floods in the past and that are advancing right now. Will they impound the rivers again? Three locations require special attention; the Shaksgam, upper Shyok and Shimshal valleys.

The Shaksgam is a tributary of the upper Yarkand. According to satellite imagery, five glaciers that have formed ice dams in the past are advancing at present. One of them, the Kyagar, has created several recent dams. An outburst from the one in 1999 caused severe damages along the lower Yarkand River in Kashgar district. In the summer of 2009, Kyagar again impounded the river and a 3.5 kilometre-long lake was formed. Fortunately it drained slowly but was close to dimensions that have led to disastrous floods in the past. There were great difficulties in obtaining satellite coverage and scientists were unable to visit the site and monitor the lake so as to predict its behaviour. This raises serious issues about what would have happened if a large outburst had occurred, and what will happen in future cases. It seems a new impoundment will form at Kyagar in 2010, and the four other glaciers are across or entering the river and may impound it.

The terminus of Yazghil Glacier, north-west Karakoram, where it enters the Shimshal River. This is one of several Karakoram glaciers on the upper Indus and upper Yarkand Rivers that have caused ice dams and glacier outburst floods in the past, and are presently advancing across the rivers. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt July, 1998)

On the Indus, three glaciers in Shimshal and three on the upper Shyok, that have formed ice dams in the past, began advancing about a decade ago. They have not yet reached positions where a dam could form, but could do so quite soon. Historically, the most dangerous have been the Chong Khumdan and Kitchik Khumdan on the Shyok. In 2009, satellite imagery revealed a sudden and large increase in thickness of the Chong Khumdan, and advance of its terminus into the river. Between 1926 and 1932, this glacier formed a series of large ice dams. At least four outburst floods were reported that caused appreciable rises in the river 1,100 kilometres away at Attock.

The 1929 event was the largest on record, and did great damage throughout the mountains and to the Indus Plains. The lake reached over 15 kilometres in length but drained in less than 24 hours. The Kitchik Khumdan also formed large ice dams in the nineteenth century, and its terminus is back in the river and has advanced across the river which passes beneath the ice. However, 2009 satellite imagery suggests it is beginning to waste back again. Conversely, its immediate neighbour the Aqtash Glacier which has also formed dams in the past advanced across the river in 2008 and 2009 and seems to be advancing very rapidly.

These glaciers highlight problems of security and the legacies of conflicts that exist in many parts of High Asia. They are in a militarised zone disputed by China, India and Pakistan. Apparently the Khumdan glaciers fall under the control of Chinese forces, but the dangers from the outburst floods are primarily in Indian and, especially, Pakistan-controlled areas. Given existing tensions, including the India-Pakistan “war” on the Siachen Glacier nearby, it is unclear how necessary studies, monitoring and warning systems can be set up.

Other hazardous phenomena

The focus here has been on glaciers, but it needs emphasising there is a range of cold climate or cryosphere phenomena that may become hazardous through climate change. Communities, infrastructure and related activities confront changes in snowfall, snow-on-the-ground and permafrost, specifically ground ice. They will also be affected by changes in distribution and intensities of freeze-thaw, the quantities and timing of surface and ground waters and their quality (water temperatures, turbidity and dissolved matter, for instance).

The accumulation zone of Biafo Glacier near Hispar Pass (5,150 metres), showing the development of cornices along ridge lines due to wind action, avalanched steep walls and heavy build up of snow on gentler slopes. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt, June 1999)

The entire mountain area is covered by seasonal snowfall, varying in duration and depth with elevation. Its melting provides about half of stream flows in an average year. Permafrost – perennially frozen ground – at intermediate altitudes is much more extensive than glaciers and includes hundreds of ice-cored rock glaciers. Freeze-thaw cycles affect even larger areas, as do erosion and deposition forms created by snow avalanches. All of these are affected by climate change. Their responses interact physically, and in ways that modify the scope or significance of glacier-related risks.

High elevation conditions on Karakoram glaciers: rockwalls, ice falls, avalanches of Broad Peak (8,050 metres), part of the watershed of Baltoro Glacier. (Photograph/Kenneth Hewitt, 2005)

Retreating glaciers and warming permafrost are associated with destabilised slopes. They can lead directly to landslides, or reduce the strength thresholds for, and the likelihood or size of, slope failures due to earthquakes or storms, which trigger most of the more destructive landslide events. For example, a dangerous landslide occurred on January 4, which blocked the Hunza River in the central Karakoram and probably involved destabilisation by changing moisture and temperature conditions in the slopes. The lake has already grown to 5.5 kilometres in length, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents. Moreover, the lake behind a similar landslide dam in 1858, immediately upstream of the present one, lasted seven months then burst with catastrophic effects all the way to the Indus plains. Meanwhile, slopes exposed by reduced ice or snow cover may dry out and become useless. Conversely, some may also become vegetated and economically useful for timber, firewood, for pastoralists and even for cultivation.

The more immediate glacier hazards and response needs in the region involve communities and activities in the high mountains. Only the Andean highlands rival inner Asia in the numbers and diversity of settlements close to and at direct risk from glacier change. However, for the broader national and international contexts, the major issues raised concern water resources and their reliability.

Some caution is needed here. A commonplace of recent reports is to say that the lives and livelihoods of in excess of 1.5 billion people are critically dependent upon the glaciers in the headwaters of the largest Asian rivers. This is a misleading generalisation. Yes, such are the numbers of people living in river basins with tributaries coming from glacierised mountains. However, in most cases the glaciers are a tiny part of the river flows, notably in the most heavily populated areas of China, India and the south-east Asian mainland.

Snowfall affects much vaster areas than the glacier cover, and is more critical. For the vast majority of these populations, rainfall and ground waters are far more important than snowfall. Glacier change can have impacts on these other parts of the hydrological cycle or may compound changes in them, but the processes are mostly indirect and too poorly known to make such generalisations. Whether and how far there are significant risks for most of these populations, even from the “disappearing” glaciers’ scenario, is far from certain.

The Indus and Yarkand basins do involve large populations directly, or potentially, dependent on the glaciers. Even here, however, there have been exaggerated or misleading claims. Yes, glacier melt waters comprise more than one-third of the flow of the main stem of the Indus, snow and ice together providing over two-thirds. It has the largest ratio of melt water to population of any river, anywhere in the world. At the moment, however, nearly all the glacial melt water goes to the sea. It happens to coincide with the heavy monsoonal rains, making flooding the greater problem, and Pakistan lacks the capacity to store much or any of the melt waters at that time.

More exactly, the key roles of glacier melt waters have little to do with the total size of the ice cover, total melt water yields, or trends. Rather they turn upon demand in just a few weeks of the year and, in rare, extreme cases when the winter rains or monsoon are very weak, poorly timed, or fail. Even for Pakistan, the main dangers for the country as a whole are, therefore, potential rather than actual, and not so much in relation to glacier change as to planned and possible water resource developments. These seem to be being undertaken with inadequate understanding and assessment of how climate and glacier fluctuations will affect them.

This will become increasingly acute for all countries of the region and raise important transboundary concerns. There are the huge commitments being made now, to hydroelectric power, irrigation, urbanisation and other developments for which water from snow and ice will become increasingly crucial. More than 100 existing dams depend partly on glacial melt waters. Several hundred more, and some of great size, are under construction or planned for China, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan.

Given the present state of monitoring and scientific understanding, it is hard to believe any of these have adequate or accurate assessments of climate- and glacier-change impacts. For the Karakoram it is of singular concern to determine whether, as global warming continues, there will be a return to glacier retreat as some believe, or if the factors responsible for the present advances will intensify. Either way, there are serious implications for how communities in Pakistan, China and India, especially, are affected and need to respond.

The importance of climate change is not in doubt, but research and policies should be based on actual evidence. Where unavailable, that should be acknowledged, not – as has happened with glacier change in the Karakoram – simply replaced by supposition based on developments or models from elsewhere. Much of what is being said fails to recognise the patchiness of past research in space and time, and a nearly-total absence of glacier monitoring at elevations where the most critical ice and climate changes occur.

The limited evidence surely reflects, in part, the sheer scale, diversity and logistical difficulties of scientific work in much of the region. Now, as more resources become available to investigate these problems, it is important to identify what sorts of information are needed, where and how they can be best obtained. Science and information systems and regional cooperation need to address the complexity and diversity of the greater Himalayan region. Some practical suggestions being promoted by new programmes include the following:

* To set up improved monitoring systems that combine remotely sensed and automatic station measurements with ground control related to basic glaciological and hydrological research;

* To expand comprehensive, multi-disciplinary research that addresses environmental and cultural complexities in the region;

* To pursue regional cooperation in data sharing, risk and resource assessments; and

* To actively involve local communities in the mountains, so that their ecological knowledge and practical concerns inform understanding and help to shape appropriate development.

Kenneth Hewitt is professor emeritus in geography and environmental studies and research associate at the Cold Regions Research Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.

Homepage image by Kenneth Hewitt shows icefalls descending to the main glacier at Kaberi-Kondus Glacier, east-central Karakoram in 1998

[Download Kenneth Hewitt's full report here]

Restoring the grasslands?

Emily Yeh — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:59:00 +0000

China has introduced a number of policies to protect the environment of the grasslands. But studies suggest the ecological and social benefits of such measures have been overstated, writes Emily Yeh.

In 2003, China introduced a new programme, known as “retire livestock and restore grassland” (tuimu huancao), which called for grazing removal in order to halt and reverse severe grassland degradation. This scheme established various types of fenced zones, including those in which grazing is to be closed for several months annually (a form of rotational grazing), and those where grazing is to be banned for five or 10 years – or in some cases, permanently.

The seasonal rotational grazing and seeding aspects of tuimu huancao resemble other grassland policies, which have been implemented since the 1980s due to concerns about widespread degradation. These have included a number of technical solutions, including the eradication of pikas (a type of rabbit), subsidisation of permanent winter homes, building of fences, provision of livestock shelters and planting of supplemental winter fodder.

In addition to stressing technical interventions, these policies included the extension of the household responsibility system – which gave farmers rights to their fields – from agricultural to pastoral areas. The rationale for promoting the privatisation of use-rights to winter pasture was based on the assumption that this would give herders the proper incentives both to better manage their land and also to become more efficient market producers, thus raising their standard of living. The possibility of having poorer families with fewer livestock rent their pastures to families with more livestock as an income generating strategy for the former is also considered a benefit in some areas.

As is the case with many policies, implementation of tuimu huancao varies widely. In the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), interventions in line with previous policies, such as seeding of grass, are stressed. Herders would prefer to use the fencing material provided by the project to reserve higher productivity alpine marsh meadows for use as winter or emergency fodder. However, officials – who determine which areas will be fenced – follow the policy of fencing off only lower-productivity alpine meadows and sandy areas, for various lengths of time, in order to improve them. This difference, stemming from different understandings of local grassland ecology, leads to a lack of local enthusiasm for the project, as does lack of compensation for loss of grazing areas, particularly where it has been promised to local herders.

Attempts at seeding appear not to be very successful thus far, particularly in the drier western areas of the TAR. In some parts of Sichuan province’s Ganzi prefecture, tuimu huancao has taken the form of distinctive concrete-post fencing along the highway, some of which does not even form full enclosures. However, local residents must guard the valuable fence from thieves, lest the fence goes missing when officials come to inspect.

While some aspects of tuimu huancao extend previous policies by focusing on technical measures to improve herders’ management of their pastures, other components of the programme are quite different from previous policies, insofar as they seek to remove pastoralists from the land entirely. This dramatically different form has been implemented in the core area of the Sanjiangyuan (“the source of the three rivers”) National-level Nature Reserve in Qinghai, a region which has been dubbed China’s “water tower,” and is considered vital to the country’s ecological security. Here, tuimu huancao is being implemented in conjunction with ecological migration, with herders to settle for 10 years, or permanently, in towns.

According to provincial government plans, those who resettle voluntarily in groups and who permanently give up livestock herding are to be given 80,000 yuan (US$11,718) as compensation, as well as 8,000 yuan (US$1,172) of grain subsidies over five years; those who voluntarily resettle as individual households and who give up herding for at least 10 years are given 40,000 yuan (US$5,859) and 6,000 yuan (US$879) as grain subsidies; and finally herders who had moved ahead of project implementation because of deteriorating environmental conditions are to receive 20,000 yuan (US$2,930) compensation packages and 3,000 yuan (US$439) of grain subsidies per year.

Several different goals have been linked to the combination of tuimu huancao and ecological migration: a significant improvement in the region’s ecology, as well as the standard of living of the pastoralists. Furthermore, the State Council’s “White Paper on China’s Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change” explicitly lists tuimu huancao as a climate adaptation strategy. To what extent, though, are these goals likely to be met? Evidence to date suggests that the ecological benefits are questionable while the social costs are high.

For tuimu huancao and ecological migration to improve grassland degradation in any given area, several conditions must hold true: grasslands must be degraded; overgrazing must be a primary cause of the problem; and removal of grazing must be able to move the ecosystem out of its undesirable state. However, a number of scientists (for example, see Richard Harris, “Rangeland Degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau”, available here) have questioned sweeping statements about pervasive degradation across the plateau. Indeed, some of the data on which commonly cited statistics about the extent of degradation and the rate at which it is increasing is based, appear to be from undocumented and methodologically dubious surveys.

Recent attempts to more rigorously quantify the extent of degradation have had conflicting results. Thus, while overgrazing in the past or present is undoubtedly a key driver of vegetation change in some areas, other factors such as climate change – and interactions between multiple factors – may also play important roles. To date, few rigorous studies have been conducted to investigate these multiple interacting factors, or the extent to which ecosystems can transition to other states under conditions imposed by various interventions. Much work remains to be done in demonstrating the ecological effects of grazing removal in areas where it is being implemented.

Furthermore, there are reasons to believe that tuimu huancao in its various forms will not be a win-win solution for both rangeland health and climate-change adaptation. Large-scale boundary fencing, together with use-rights privatisation, reduces mobility across the landscape. (Although small-scale fencing for reserve pasture or fodder production is generally welcome). This could potentially increase vulnerability to devastating snowstorms, which climate-change models predict will become more frequent and severe. In addition, such fencing can have negative effects for migratory wildlife, as well as for local livelihoods, as a result of the uneven spatial distribution of rangeland resources.

A study conducted by Chinese scientists in Sichuan’s Ruo’ergai county found that the number of herders facing lack of water availability tripled after household rangeland allocation. (See Yan Zhaoli et al, “A review of rangeland privatization and its implications in the Tibetan Plateau”, available here). Furthermore, recent ecological evidence from warming and grazing experiments on the eastern Tibetan plateau suggests that the presence of moderate grazing actually helps control the expected effects of global warming on reduction of biodiversity and rangeland quality. Experimental warming leads to decreased species richness, including of medicinal plants, as well as decreased biomass, including palatable biomass. However, these effects are dampened in the presence of grazing (see articles by Julia Klein, available here). These results suggest tuimu huancao may not be adaptive for climate change.

Studies to date of those who have been resettled through ecological migration also suggest that the benefits of resettlement for improving the livelihoods of herders are overstated. Some who have voluntarily resettled have expressed regrets about doing so, saying they did not realise the extent to which everything in their new town-based lives must be purchased with cash. For many families, government compensation has been inadequate, especially as inflation drives up costs while subsidies remain the same. In one study conducted in Golok, the annual income of those resettled in towns was reportedly lower than their earlier subsistence income, while expenditures were higher; those interviewed also stated that their health conditions had declined after resettlement, because of changes in living conditions as well as diet.

Contributing significantly to the problems is the fact that the Tibetan ex-pastoralists do not have Chinese language and other skills needed to earn an income in the towns. While some are employed as unskilled construction labourers, or have found work in new income opportunities, such as breeding and selling Tibetan mastiffs, most are subsisting only on temporary subsidies and income from digging caterpillar fungus.

Those who do not have the labour power to dig caterpillar fungus are the worst off. Participants of skills training workshops have often still been unable to find work. Once subsidies run out, problems stemming from this unemployment and under-employment will be exacerbated. Indeed, social problems have already emerged, with resettlement areas quickly earning nicknames such as “robber villages,” purportedly because former pastoralists, idle and without income, have resorted to theft.

At the same time, in many parts of the Sanjiangyuan area, it is primarily those families with few or no livestock who have resettled. Some of their pastures are still being grazed by other families, thus undermining the original ecological rationales of the program. Given all of these factors, in many areas, tuimu huancao and ecological migration seem unlikely to be successful in living up to their worthy environmental and social goals. Instead, they may neither improve rangeland conditions nor enhance climate adaptation, while also having negative effects on local livelihoods.

However, much more rigorous empirical work remains to be done to examine the causes and extent of rangeland degradation, the socioeconomic and ecological effects of current policies, and the best measures to enhance local capacity to adapt to global climate change on the Tibetan plateau.

Emily Yeh is assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Educated at MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, she has conducted research on property rights, natural resource conflicts, environmental history, emerging environmentalisms and the political economy and cultural politics of development and land-use change in Tibet.

Homepage image by Ba Tu. Sign in Inner Mongolia reads tuimu, or “retire livestock”.

Policies for an eco-plateau

Beth Walker — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:41:00 +0000

Climate change poses new threats to life on the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. Beth Walker introduces a week-long series about government responses to the challenge, their environmental and social effects.

Tibetan grasslands constitute one of the most important grazing ecosystems in the world. Since 2000, when China began its “Western Development Strategy”, the global significance of the Tibetan plateau region has been widely recognised, both as the “third pole” – a water tower upon which around 40% of the world’s population depend – and as a geographic region with a unique natural and cultural heritage.

Traditional pastoralism, and to a lesser extent subsistence hunting, have been practiced in this high-altitude, fragile ecosystem for over 5,000 years. However, climate change is now leading to historically unprecedented pressures. For example, at the centre of the plateau at the source of the Yellow River, over one-third of the grasslands have transformed into semi-desert conditions.

The Chinese government has introduced a number of policies aimed at reversing this trend and protecting the ecology and biodiversity of the grasslands over the last decades. Since the 1980s, these have included the assignment of property rights and the fencing of rangeland. As the Western Development Strategy began, the first programme to be adopted and implemented was a nationwide environmental restoration program. The “farmland to forest” policy, or “grain to green” (tuigeng huanlin), which converted steep cultivated land to forest, was one of the most important initiatives. In grassland areas, it is known as the “pastures to grassland” policy (tuimu huancao). The basic premise of this policy is that a decade of respite from livestock grazing is necessary for degraded grassland to be restored to its natural state, and therefore domestic livestock – and their herders – should be moved away. Now, new fencing is being erected at an unprecedented rate in rural grassland areas.

However, this policy has been recently overshadowed by another attempt to conserve the region, known as “ecological migration” (shengtai yimin). Since the mid 1990s, “ecological migration” has been used to describe the planned relocation of people from areas under environmental pressure. It was adopted as official state policy in 2002. The major target of this policy has been the Sanjiangyuan (“Three river sources”) region of Qinghai, situated in the centre of the Tibetan plateau, which encompasses the headwaters of three major Asian rivers: the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, and Mekong River. In 2003, the area became the second-largest nature reserve in the world, as well as the highest and most extensive wetland protected area.

Now, tens of thousands of families have been asked to move from these fragile grassland areas and adopt new livelihoods in farming, or to live in new towns. In Qinghai, for example, 35 resettlement communities have already been built and 51 more are under construction. According to government plans, over 100,000 people (17% of the region’s population) will have been relocated from Sanjiangyuan by the start of this year, with the aim of restoring the grassland ecosystem.

However, these resettlement projects have raised serious concerns, mainly among academics, about the policy and its effects on minority groups in China. According to some scholars, these kinds of projects have historically been as much about the urbanisation of nomadic peoples (in this case, mostly ethnic Tibetans and Mongolians), as they have been about protecting the environment. Moreover, recent studies have suggested that overgrazing may not in fact be the major driver of environmental degradation

In her article for chinadialogue tomorrow, “Restoring the grasslands?”, Emily Yeh reviews recent Chinese government grassland policies and relocation programmes. Yeh writes that recent studies suggest the environmental and social benefits of such measures have been overstated. Later in the week, Judith Shapiro looks in detail at the tragic history of the Lakota Sioux in the American state of South Dakota, and asks what China can learn from the sad history of Native American resettlement.

Beth Walker is a researcher at chinadialogue’s “the third pole” project

Homepage image by reurinkjan

The Mekong under threat

Milton Osborne — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:42:00 +0000

South-east Asia’s longest river has been transformed in the past three decades. Now, the food security of the Lower Mekong Basin hangs in the balance, writes Milton Osborne.

Until the 1980s the Mekong River flowed freely for 4,900 kilometres from its 5,100-metre-high source in Tibet to the coast of Vietnam, where it finally poured into the South China Sea. The Mekong is the world’s twelfth longest river, and the eighth or tenth largest, in terms of the 475 billion cubic metres of water it discharges annually. Then and now it passes through or by China, Burma (Myanmar), Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It is south-east Asia’s longest river, but 44% of its course is in China, a fact of capital importance for its ecology and the problems associated with its governance.

In 1980 not only were there no dams on its course, but much of the river could not be used for sizeable, long-distance navigation because of the great barrier of the Khone Falls, located just above the border between Cambodia and Laos, and the repeated rapids and obstacles that marked its course in Laos and China. Indeed, no exaggeration is involved in noting that the Mekong’s overall physical configuration in 1980 was remarkably little changed from that existing when it was explored by the French Mekong Expedition that travelled painfully up the river from Vietnam’s Mekong Delta to Jinghong in southern Yunnan in 1866 and 1867. This was the first European expedition to explore the Mekong from southern Vietnam into China and to produce an accurate map of its course to that point.

Since 2003, the most substantial changes to the Mekong’s character below China have related to navigation. Following a major program to clear obstacles from the Mekong begun early in the present decade, a regular navigation service now exists between southern Yunnan and the northern Thai river port of Chiang Saen. It is not clear whether the Chinese, who promoted the concept of these clearances and carried out the work involved, still wish to develop navigation further down the river, as was previously their plan. To date, the environmental effects of the navigation clearances have been of a limited character.

The Mekong plays a vital role in the countries of the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB): Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. (Burma is not within the basin). In all four LMB countries the Mekong is a source of irrigation. In Vietnam’s Mekong Delta the annual pattern of flood and retreat insure that this region contributes over 50% of agriculture’s contribution to the country’s GDP. For all four LMB countries the Mekong and its associated systems, particularly Cambodia’s Great Lake (Tonle Sap), are a bountiful source of fish, with the annual value of the catch conservatively valued at US$2 billion. More than 70% of the Cambodian population’s annual animal protein consumption comes from the river’s fish. Eighty per cent of the Mekong’s fish species are migratory, some travelling many hundreds of kilometres between spawning and reaching adulthood. Overall, eight out of 10 persons living in the LMB depend on the river for sustenance, either in terms of wild fish captured in the river or through both large and small-scale agriculture and horticulture.

Since the 1980s, the character of the river has been steadily transformed by China’s dam-building program in Yunnan province. The important changes that had taken place on the course of the river since 1980 and up to 2004 were outlined in the Lowy Institute Paper, River at Risk: The Mekong and the Water Politics of Southeast Asia. In 2010 three hydroelectric dams are already in operation and two more very large dams are under construction and due for completion in 2012 and 2017. Plans exist for at least two further dams, and by 2030 there could be a “cascade” of seven dams in Yunnan. Even before that date and with five dams commissioned, China will be able to regulate the flow of the river, reducing the floods of the wet season and raising the level of the river during the dry. In building its dams, China has acted without consulting its downstream neighbours. Although until now the effects of the dams so far built have been limited, this is set to change within a decade, as discussed below.

For despite the limited environmental costs of the dams China has so far completed, and of the river clearances to aid navigation, this state of affairs will change once China has five dams in operation. And the costs exacted by the Chinese dams will be magnified if the proposed mainstream dams below China are built.

Even if no dams are built on the mainstream below China, the cascade to which it is committed will ultimately have serious effects on the functioning of the Mekong once the dams are used to control the river’s flow. This will be the case because the cascade will:

* Alter the hydrology of the river and so the current “flood pulse”, the regular rise and fall of the river on an annual basis which plays an essential part in the timing of spawning and the migration pattern. This will be particularly important in relation to the Tonle Sap in Cambodia, but will have an effect throughout the river’s course;

* Block the flow of sediment down the river which plays a vital part both in depositing nutrients on the agricultural regions flooded by the river and also as a trigger for fish migration — at present well over 50% of the river’s sediment comes from China;

* At least initially cause problems by restricting the amount of flooding that takes place most importantly in Cambodia and Vietnam; and

* Lead to the erosion of river banks.

Proposed dams below China

So China’s dam-building plans are worrying enough, but the proposed new mainstream dams would pose even more serious concerns. In contrast to what has occurred in China, and until very recently, there have been no firm plans for the construction of dams on the mainstream of the Mekong below China. This situation has changed over the past three years. Memoranda of Understanding have been signed for 11 proposed dams: seven in Laos; two between Laos and Thailand; and two in Cambodia. The proposed dams are being backed by foreign private capital or Chinese state-backed firms. Government secrecy in both Cambodia and Laos means that it is difficult to judge which, if any, of these proposed dams will actually come into being. Attention and concern have focused on two sites: Don Sahong at the Khone Falls in southern Laos and Sambor in north-eastern Cambodia. The reason for this attention is that if built these dams would block the fish migrations that are essential to insure the food supplies of Laos and Cambodia.

Those built at sites higher upstream would cause the least damage to fish stocks, but if, as currently seems possible, the most likely dams to be built would be at Don Sahong and Sambor, the costs to fish stocks could be very serious. This is because unanimous expert opinion judges that there are no ways to mitigate the blocking of fish migration that would occur if these dams are constructed. None of the suggested possible forms of mitigation — fish ladders, fish lifts, and alternative fish-passages — are feasible for the species of fish in the Mekong and the very large biomass that is involved in their migratory pattern. Fish ladders were tried and failed at the Pak Mun dam on one of the Mekong’s tributaries in Thailand in the 1990s.

Why are the governments of Laos and Cambodia contemplating the construction of dams that seem certain to have a devastating effect on their populations’ food security? The answers are complex and include some of the following:

* A lack of knowledge at some levels of government;

* A readiness to disregard available information on the basis that it may be inaccurate; and

* A belief or conviction that fishing is “old-fashioned”, whereas the production of hydroelectricity is “modern”.

In Cambodia’s case, and in particular in relation to the proposed dam at Sambor, the fact that a Chinese firm is seeking to construct the dam raises the possibility that prime minister Hun Sen is unready to offend the country that has become Cambodia’s largest aid donor and Cambodia’s “most trusted friend”. In Laos, the proposal for a dam at Don Sahong is very much linked to the interests of the Siphandone family for whom southern Laos is a virtual fief. Of all the proposed dam sites, Don Sahong is the most studied in terms of knowledge of fisheries so that it can be safely said that the planned dam would wreak havoc on a migratory system that involves fish moving through the Hou Sahong channel throughout the year, movement that takes place in both directions, upstream and downstream.

In the face of the threats posed by both the Chinese dams and those proposed for the downstream stretches of the river, there is no existing body able to mandate or control what individual countries choose to do on their sections of the Mekong. The agreement establishing the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in 1995 does not include China or Burma, and though the latter’s absence is not important, the fact that China is not an MRC member underlines the body’s weakness. In any event, the MRC members’ commitment to maintaining the Mekong’s sustainability has not overcome their basic commitment to national self-interest. A prime example of this is the manner in which the Lao government has proceeded in relation to the proposed Don Sahong dam. For at least two years while the dam was under consideration there was no consultation with Cambodia. Similarly, so far as can be judged, Cambodia’s consideration of a possible dam at Sambor has taken place without consultation with the governments of either Laos or Vietnam.

At the moment the best hope is that both the Cambodian and Lao governments will abandon their plans for Sambor and Don Sahong. If they do not, the future of the Mekong as a great source of food, both through fish and agriculture, is in serious jeopardy. At the time of writing the intentions of the Lao and Cambodian governments remain uncertain.

Concern about dams in China and the LMB is given added importance in the light of worries associated with the likely effects of climate change in the region through which the river flows. Research suggests there will be a series of challenges to the Mekong’s future ecological health. Until recently concerns about the likely impact of climate change tended to focus on the ongoing reduction in the size of the glaciers from which its springs in the Himalayas and which feed it as the result of snow melt. But while there is no doubt that a diminishment in size of the glaciers feeding the Mekong is taking place, recent research has suggested that a more immediate serious threat to the river’s health will come from sea-level changes, particularly as rising levels could begin to inundate large sections of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. To what extent the threat posed by rising sea levels will be affected by another predicted development linked to climate change — greatly increased precipitation leading to more flooding during the wet season — is not yet clearly established. But research is pointing to a greatly increased precipitation that is likely to cause major increases in flooding in the future, possibly as early as 2030.

Against the pessimistic views outlined in this article perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that once serious consequences begin to become apparent advice can be offered to mitigate the worst effects of the developments taking place. Where once it was appropriate to write of risks, when assessing the Mekong’s future it is now time to write of fundamental threats to the river’s current and vital role in all of the countries of the Lower Mekong Basin.

Milton Osborne is visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute. He has been associated with the south-east Asian region since being posted to the Australian embassy in Phnom Penh in 1959. Osborne is the author of 10 books on the history and politics of south-east Asia, including The Mekong: turbulent past, uncertain future (2006) and Southeast Asia: an introductory history.

An earlier version of this article was published as "The Mekong River Under Threat," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 2-2-10, January 11, 2010. It is used here with permission.

This article draws on the author’s Lowy Institute Paper 27, 2009. See the complete paper here. To read the complete paper, it is necessary to type in the current year after entering the site.

Homepage image shows the proposed location of the Sambor Dam, Kratie province, Cambodia. Photograph by Carl Middleton, International Rivers.

The iceman of Ladakh

Athar Parvaiz — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:56:00 +0000

Chewang Norphel has pioneered a simple method of creating artificial “glaciers” to irrigate farmland in high-altitude deserts. Athar Parvaiz reports from northwest India.

In December 1997, when world leaders assembled in Kyoto to put in place the first treaty to address climate change, Chewang Norphel had already pioneered an adaptive solution to water worries in the high-altitude deserts of Ladakh, northwest India.

This cold, scenic desert has for many years suffered the impacts of climate change. “Glaciers have been receding rapidly for the last four-to-five decades,” said Norphel, 74. Eighty percent of the farmers in Leh district, he said, depend on glacier-melt to irrigate agricultural land and grow vegetables, barley and wheat. “This creates a lot of problems for the farmers, less snowfall and irregular ice-melt is now becoming a permanent feature,” he added.

The Indus River flows hundreds of metres beneath the farmlands of Leh – too far below for the farmers to rely on its water. “It is so low that we are not in a position to build lift stations for irrigating our farmlands,” said Norphel. Moreover, there are many limitations on farming in a cold desert like Ladakh. “Only one crop is grown a year here, for which the sowing period starts in April-May – a time when water is not available in a great enough quantity,” said Norphel.

Norphel said that every farmer wonders if there is a way to start farming at an earlier time. “I vividly remember that when I was a child, glaciers from lower ranges used to supply water as early as in April, but now all those glaciers have vanished,” recalled Norphel.

Call it a quirk of fate, but Norphel stumbled by chance upon the phenomenon that is now increasingly seen as a solution for fixing irrigation problems in the arid region. “People in cold regions leave the taps in bathrooms half-running during the night in winter, in order to avoid water freezing in the supply-pipe from the tank,” said Norphel, a civil engineer who used to work in a government department. “One morning, I realised that this water was freezing in our garden nearby. It struck me that small, artificial glaciers could be shaped in the same manner.”

“Since I had travelled to most of the places in the region during my service period until 1986, I was aware of the topography of the entire region,” he said. “I thought the shaded areas in the lower ranges could be utilised for this purpose.” Thus began a new incarnation in the engineer’s career: he became the “iceman”, as he is now popularly known.

Norphel created his first artificial glacier in Phuktse Phu village in 1987, simply by diverting a watercourse, reducing its volume and velocity, and then making it accumulate in the shadow of a hill. “The shadowy area for the artificial glacier is a must,” said Norphel. “It is a very simple method which can be followed by a layman. It doesn’t cost much.”

Norphel has already created around eight artificial glaciers, which cater to the irrigation needs of farmers in various hamlets, and he is now busy making three more glaciers near Stakmo village. “It will cost me around one million Indian rupees [US$21,460, or 149,000 yuan] to create these three glaciers, which would together produce two million cubic feet [56,634 cubic metres] of ice,” he said. Many of the artificial glaciers, such as those in Omla, Stoke and Stakmo, were damaged by floods in 2006 and are now being repaired.

The Indian Army, under its Operation Sadbhavna programme, is funding the repair of the artificial glaciers at Stakmo, while limited funding for other artificial glaciers has come from the government’s watershed development programmes. India’s deparment of science and technology has also been financing the repairs.

According to Norphel and other experts in Leh, the artificial glaciers are much to the satisfaction of farmers. The artificial glaciers are also seen as a solution for other problems: helping to recharge groundwater and rejuvenate springs; enabling farmers to harvest two crops per year; developing pastures for cattle-rearing; and reducing water-sharing disputes between farmers.

The creation of artificial glaciers could be a significant technique, given studies that show a good percentage of glaciers in the Himalayas are receding at a rapid rate. According to a report from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), 35% of the glaciers in the region will disappear in the next 20 years even as temperatures across the Himalayas would rise by 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. In a warming region, the iceman’s invention may be a useful adaptive tool.

Athar Parvaiz is an environmental journalist based in Kashmir

Homepage image: Chewang Norphel in Ladakh, photo by Athar Parvaiz

“There’s no doubt it’s getting warmer”

Joydeep Gupta — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:14:00 +0000

Receding glaciers increase the risks to already perilous lives and livelihoods high in the Himalayas. Joydeep Gupta reports from the mountains of north-west India.

The annual monsoon that is the lifeline of south Asia stops at the 5,000-metre slopes of the Pir Panjal range in the Himalayas. The Tibetan plateau effectively starts on the northern slopes of the Lahaul and Spiti valleys in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Little glaciers roll down both the northern and southern slopes, later turning into streams that feed the mighty Indus River system that straddles India and Pakistan.

The trouble is that the glaciers are getting smaller – and so are the streams. “Do you see that glacier coming down the saddle between those two peaks?” asked local farmer Vikas Sharma in late September. “We call it sona pani [gold water], because that is the water that irrigates the farms in my village, Kumpi, which you can see near the bottom of the valley.”

“Until 10 years ago, that glacier used to come right down to the bottom of the slope. For at least nine months of the year, it used to start melting only when it reached the outskirts of our village,” said Sharma. “But then it started to melt higher and higher up the slope, and there was less water too. Now it is September – just after the monsoon, when it should have the maximum ice – but it’s only halfway down the slope. I don’t know how we are going to irrigate our crops next summer.”

His village is not the only one where people risk losing their crops due to shortage of water. Sona pani is part of the complex of glaciers at the Rohtang pass that feed two major rivers: the Beas River, which flows through the Kullu Valley, and the Chenab River, which flows through the Lahaul valley. Once out of the Himalayas and in the great plains of south Asia, these rivers flow into the Indus River and form vital parts of the system that provides water to Punjab (literally, the “land of the five rivers”) in India and Pakistan. Less snow here means less water in the rivers that irrigate the main foodgrain producing areas in both countries.

The Hindu Kush Himalayas – sometimes called the water tower of Asia – provide water to 10 major river basins in China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan and a number of countries in central Asia. An estimated 1.3 billion people depend on the waters from these glaciers. They are at increasing risk due to climate change, which has caused the glaciers to recede.

I stood in a meadow next to the almost-4,000-metre-high Rohtang Pass, which connects the northern areas of Himachal Pradesh and the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir to the rest of India. The rugged road, much loved by trekkers and motorsports enthusiasts due to its breathtaking views, used to be closed by the snows from November to May each year.

Officially, it still closes throughout this period. “But now we never know when it will snow and when it will not”, said Sukh Ram, one of the men employed by the Indian Army’s Border Roads Organisation to keep the pass clear. “Last winter, it didn’t really snow till February, though we kept the pass closed as per orders. But now it suddenly started snowing a couple of weeks back [in early September]. We had to close the pass for three days, and so many people were stranded on the northern side.”

In the meadow there was snow on the ground, which began to melt as the sunshine gathered strength and fell on the walls of a broken-down shed. “We shelter in that shed when there’s a blizzard,” said Ram. “This is a dangerous place. It gets very windy every afternoon – and you never know when a blizzard will strike. When we came here in May, after a gap of many months, we found the frozen body of a man inside the shed. He was a local bureaucrat, who must have got stuck in a blizzard while trying to cross the pass.”

These dangers have always been part and parcel of life in the Himalayas. But life is getting more perilous, and in new ways. As the glaciers start to melt faster due to global warming, in many cases the waters accumulate just below the glacier, as the little stream that issues from the glacier’s snout becomes unable to carry the extra water. These glacial lakes threaten to burst their banks as the water accumulates. Such glacial lake outburst floods – GLOFs, as they are called – have occurred a number of times in Nepal and Bhutan over the past 50 years, though there is no record of them before. Every time it means loss of life and property downstream. Scientists at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) say there are at least 36 GLOF threats right now in Nepal alone.

These are the immediate threats as the glaciers recede. In the longer term, the risk is that ice accumulation in these glaciers will occur at a rate slower than the melt, leading to the disappearance of at least the smaller glaciers from the Himalayan region. There are an estimated 9,000 to 12,000 of these small glaciers in the Indian Himalayas alone. Their disappearance, in turn, means rivers that now run throughout the year will become seasonal. The glaciers may contribute only about 10% of the total water flow in large river basins like the Ganges, but this is vital for perennial water flow and for water supply downstream in the dry months, when it is most needed.

Scientists say they do not know enough about what is happening to the Himalayas, especially the Himalayan glaciers, as a result of climate change. The last assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, described the area as data-deficient. Indian and Chinese scientists are now starting a large number of research projects to study the effects, including some joint projects. Meanwhile, the few weather stations that have been set up show that the rate of warming in the Himalayas is six times higher than the global average, says professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a leading glaciologist at the New Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute. India has just started a major research programme to study the Himalayan ecosystem, especially the way it is being affected by climate change. But many worried policy-makers say the time to act is now: they cannot afford to wait for the results of systematic scientific studies, which may take years. As Rajesh Kumar, a glaciologist with the Birla Institute of Technology Extension Centre in Jaipur, points out, even calculating the extent to which the temperature has gone upwill take years, since there were few weather stations in the Himalayas in the past.

Farmer Vikas Sharma had little doubt about the need to act now. “I don’t know to what extent it’s getting warmer,” he said. “We don’t have the sophisticated instruments to measure that exactly. But there’s no doubt it’s getting warmer and winters are getting shorter. We’ll soon have to start growing other varieties of maize that don’t need so much water. We know those varieties are not so good and we won’t get the same price in the market. But what’s the option?”

Joydeep Gupta is associate editor of Indo-Asian News Service and secretary of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India.

Homepage image by Simply Czar

Forests at the frontline

Bhimsen Thapaliya — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:40:00 +0000

Nepal supports a global agreement to help protect the climate by leaving the country’s forests intact. Bhimsen Thapaliya investigates the politics of such a deal.

Nepal has lobbied in favour of a global pact that will convert its community-managed forests into cash, without cutting down a single tree. With less than 60 days left before the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen, Nepal is raising its voice to call for a framework agreement that ensures judicious payments for carbon-absorbing forests – and their enhancement – achieved through local-level management.

Regenerating forests by checking potential deforestation can act as “green servant”, cleaning up the carbon mess created by big polluters in the developed world. One of the key negotiating points for Nepal, which has 1.25 million hectares (12,500 square kilometres) of forests under community guardianship, is that these carbon mopping and management services should be duly compensated.

The rich polluters should pay not only for the carbon our trees absorb, but also for the managerial and forest enhancement efforts put by the communities, said Jagadish Chandra Baral, head of the REDD-Forestry and Climate Change Cell, which is under Nepal’s ministry of forest and soil conservation.

Voices for new pact have already been raised and will intensify in Bangkok this week, and in the Barcelona meeting, leading up to the Copenhagen summit in December, Baral said. Nepal has an impressive track record in community-involved forestry management, which was started to save forests from the critical point of deforestation in the mid- to late-1970s. However, deforestation still continues at the rate of nearly 2% every year.

“We are seeking a global framework pact in Copenhagen that recognises the role of our forests in carbon absorption, biodiversity conservation and other ecological services,” said Bhola Bhattarai, general secretary of the Federation of Community Forestry Users, Nepal (FECOFUN). Bhattarai is part of a readiness action group for the proposed forest conservation and payment mechanism, which is known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).

The REDD scheme, which is still a hot topic of debate, seeks recognition of the role of deforestation control measures in reducing carbon emissions – an issue overlooked by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas causing global warming and climate change. If the proposed REDD plan comes into force, Nepal’s community forests can claim payments in the global carbon market for checking potential deforestation.

But the issue does not end there. The proposed REDD scheme has now evolved into more inclusive programme called “REDD-plus”, which seeks to cover additional components, such as compensation for forest management, improved livelihood and enriching he ecology.

“Community forestry is not only about checking the dangerous trend of deforestation and forest degradation,” said FECOFUN’s Bhattarai. “We have also accumulated a vast storehouse of conservation knowledge over the decades. We are going to claim payments for this as well.”

If things proceed as envisioned by the REDD-plus proposal, Nepal is set to convert its forests into cash, turning the saying Hariyo ban Nepal ko dhan (“Green forests are Nepal’s money earner”) into a reality. But significantly, these earnings will come without losing any trees.

As Nepal continues works on REDD in readiness for the Copenhagen climate jamboree, it is seeking the commitment of developed nations to abide by specific emissions reduction targets and ensure payments to services rendered by anti-deforestation measures. “We want payment commitments from developed nations for all the services our forests have rendered to the environment and communities. They cannot leave us alone in the carbon market controlled by private sector,” said Bhattarai.

The Kyoto Protocol has made emissions reduction legally binding for developed countries, but offers flexible arrangement under which they can offset their excess emissions by purchasing carbon credits from “clean” projects.

“At the climate summit, we will be seeking commitments from the developed nations to cut their emissions by 45% on 1990 levels by 2020,” said Purushottam Ghimire, a key climate change official at Nepal’s ministry of environment, science and technology, speaking at a recent consultative meeting.

REDD-plus is a scheme that will bring benefits to Nepal, but it should also not come in such a form that infringes upon the livelihood rights of forest-dependent indigenous peoples, said Nima Lama, secretary of the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN). Lama said that the global caucus of indigenous peoples has demanded that clear distinction be made between local communities and indigenous peoples and no REDD project should come into operation without their consent.

This article first appeared in Gorkhapatra/The Rising Nepal. It is translated and reproduced here with permission.

Homepage image by symmetry_mind

River of discord

Michael Richardson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:31:00 +0000

Hydropower projects in China have created tensions along the Mekong. Rivers know no borders, writes Michael Richardson, but dams do.

Back in 1986, when China began building the first of a series of dams on the Mekong River, hardly anyone in the downstream countries of south-east Asia paid attention. But today, as China races to finish the fourth dam for generating electricity on the upper reaches of south-east Asia’s biggest river, concerns about possible environmental impacts in the region are rising fast. Moreover, fear about antagonising China and south-east Asia’s internecine dispute might make any concerted move unlikely.

The sheer scale of China’s engineering to harness the power of the Mekong and change its natural flow is setting off alarm bells, especially in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, the four countries of the lower Mekong basin where more than 60 million people depend on the river for food, water and transportation.

A report in May by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) warned that China’s plan for a cascade of eight dams on the Mekong, which it calls the Lancang Jiang, might pose “a considerable threat” to the river and its natural riches. In June, Thailand’s prime minister was handed a petition calling for a halt to dam building. It was signed by over 11,000 people, many of them subsistence farmers and fishermen who live along the river’s mainstream and its many tributaries.

Some analysts say that if the worst fears of critics are realised, relations between China and its neighbors in mainland south-east Asia will be severely damaged. But mindful of the growing power and influence of China, southeast Asian governments have muffled their concern. Meanwhile, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand have put forward plans to dam their sections of the Mekong mainstream, prompting Vietnam to object and undermining the local environmentalists’ case against China.

Although the Mekong is widely regarded as a southeast Asian river, its source is in the glaciers high in Tibet. Nearly half of the 4,880-kilometre river flows through China’s Yunnan province before it reaches southeast Asia. Since there is no international treaty governing the use of transboundary rivers, China is in a dominant position, controlling the Mekong’s headwater. It has the right to develop its section of the river as it sees fit, and has done so without consulting its neighbors, let alone seeking their approval.

The Mekong River basin drains water from an area of 795,000 square kilometres. The Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental agency formed in 1995 by the four lower basin countries estimates that the sustainable hydropower potential of the lower basin alone is a massive 30,000 megawatts. But it also says that there are major challenges in balancing the benefits of clean electricity, water storage and flood control from the dams against negative impacts. These include population displacement, obstruction to fish movements up and down the river, and changes in water and sediment flow.

The cascade of dams being constructed in Yunnan will generate over 15,500 megawatts of electricity for cities and industries, helping to replace polluting fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil. The eight Yunnan dams will produce about the same amount of electricity as 30 big coal-burning plants.

China's Xiaowan dam, the world's tallest, poses a huge challenge to the Mekong river basin countries.

The fourth of China’s Mekong dams, at Xiaowan, is due to be completed by 2012 at a cost of nearly US$4 billion. Rising 292 metres, the dam wall will be the world’s tallest. Its reservoir will hold 15 billion cubic metres of water, more than five times the combined capacity of the first three Chinese dams. Since the end of 2008, when the river diversion channel of the Xiaowan hydropower dam was closed by Chinese engineers, the reservoir has been filling with water, paving the way to start the first electricity generating turbine in September. When full, the reservoir will cover an area of over 190 square kilometres. With a capacity to generate 4,200 megawatts of electricity, Xiaowan will be the largest dam so far on the Mekong.

However, by 2014, China plans to finish another dam below the Xiaowan at Nuozhadu. It will not be quite as high but will impound even more water, nearly 23 billion cubic metres, and generate 5,000 megawatts of power.

Chinese officials have assured southeast Asia that the Yunnan dams will have a positive environmental impact. They say that by holding some water back in the wet season, the dams will help control flooding and river bank erosion downstream. Conversely, releases from the hydropower reservoirs to generate power in the summer will help ease water shortages in the lower Mekong during the dry season.

However, the UNEP-AIT report said that Cambodia’s great central lake Tonle Sap, the nursery of the lower Mekong’s fish stocks, and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, its rice bowl, were particularly at risk from changes to the river’s unique cycle of flood and drought. The Cambodian lake is linked to the Mekong by the Tonle Sap River. Scientists are concerned that reductions in the Mekong’s natural floodwater flow will cause falls in the lake’s water level and fish stocks, already under pressure from over-harvesting and pollution.

Vietnam worries that dwindling water volumes will aggravate the problem of sea water intrusion and salination in the low-lying Mekong Delta, where climate change and sea level rise threaten to inundate large areas of productive farm land and displace millions of people by the end of this century.

The MRC says it has been discussing technical cooperation with Chinese experts to assess downstream river changes caused by hydropower development. But China has refused to join the MRC or to agree to observe its resource management guidelines, preferring to remain a “dialogue partner”. Full membership would intensify scrutiny of its dam plans by downstream southeast Asian states and increase pressure on Beijing, which controls 21% of the water, to take their interests into account.

While China’s program to dam the Mekong is moving ahead on schedule, proposals to do the same on the southeast Asian section of the river have been put on hold. Before the global credit crisis and economic slow-down hit Asia’s export-oriented economies with full force this year, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand had announced plans to follow China’s lead on the upper Mekong by building a series of dams on the mainstream of the river in the lower basin. There are now over 3,200 megawatts of electricity being generated on Mekong tributaries in Laos. But that too is being hurt by the crisis as Thailand, the main consumer of electricity in the lower Mekong, has announced that because of the global economic downturn, it expects to cut substantially the amount of power it imports from Laos.

The slowdown, however, provides a breathing space for southeast Asian countries to assess how the Mekong mainstream dam projects will affect the interests of people in the river basin. But without China’s full participation, no Mekong management plan can be effective.

Beijing is intent on forging closer economic integration with mainland southeast Asia through trade, investment, communication, transport and energy cooperation with its neighbors in the greater Mekong subregion. But this strategy may backfire if the region concludes that Chinese dams are having an adverse impact on their future development prospects.

Michael Richardson is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.

This article first appeared at YaleGlobal. It is reproduced here with permission.

© Copyright 2009 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Homepage image: Villagers affected by dam construction on the Mekong River held a demonstration on March 14, 2009, in Chiang Rai province, Thailand. They called on the government to end dam construction on the Mekong and Salween rivers. Photo courtesy of Carl Middleton.