Kathmandu, Nepal
Reuters
Nepal’s snow-capped mountains have lost close to one-third of their ice in over 30 years due to global warming, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday after a visit to the area near Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak.
Climate scientists say the earth’s temperature has increased by an average of 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, but warming across South Asia’s Himalayas has been greater than the global averages.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks with Nepal’s Minister of Foreign Afairs Narayan Prakash Saud also known as NP Saud upon his arrival at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, on 29th October, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar
Glaciers in Nepal, wedged between two major carbon polluters – India and China, melted 65 per cent faster in the last decade than in the previous one, the UN chief said in a video message after visiting the Solukhumbu region.
“I am here today to cry out from the rooftop of the world: stop the madness,” he said, calling for an end to “fossil fuel age” with the warning that melting glaciers would mean swollen lakes and rivers sweeping away entire communities, and seas rising at record rates.
Glaciers in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya could lose up to 75 per cent of their volume by century’s end due to global warming, scientists said in a report published in June this year, causing dangerous flooding and water shortages for 240 million people who live in the mountainous region.
Climbers returning from Everest have said the mountain was dryer and greyer now.
“Record temperatures mean record glacier melt. Nepal has lost close to one-third of its ice in just over 30 years,” Guterres, who is on a four-day visit to the country, said.
He also urged countries to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avert “the worst of climate chaos”.
Meanwhile, the presidency of next month’s COP28 climate summit and two renewable energy organisations on Monday urged governments to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 as part of efforts to stop global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Countries hope to strike a deal on the increase in capacity at the latest round of global climate negotiations set to get under way in Dubai in late November, which will focus on the gaps in the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement that established the 1.5 degree ceiling.
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Renewable energy capacity needs “to reach more than 11,000 GW” by 2030, the United Arab Emirates’ COP28 presidency, the International Renewable Energy Agency and the Global Renewables Alliance said in a joint report.
Most major economies are already on board with that goal. Group of 20 nations, among them China, the United States and India, agreed in September to pursue efforts to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Without rapid action to cut CO2 emissions, scientists say Earth will cross the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold in the coming decade, unleashing far more severe climate change effects on people, wildlife and ecosystems.
However, striking a deal among the nearly 200 countries that attend COP28 meetings will not be easy. European nations and climate-vulnerable states argue that it is not enough to agree to scale up clean energy, if countries do not also agree to quit the polluting energy that is causing climate change.
They say a renewable energy deal at COP28 must be paired with a commitment to phase out CO2-emitting fossil fuels – a pledge that has faced resistance from Saudi Arabia, Russia and other fossil fuel-reliant economies.
“You cannot just have the renewables goal and then call the COP a success,” European Union climate policy chief Wopke Hoekstra told an event in Brussels on Friday.
Guiding the COP28 talks will be the UAE’s Sultan al-Jaber, a choice that has drawn criticism from some US and EU lawmakers as well as campaigners as he is the boss of state oil giant ADNOC, and the UAE’s climate envoy.
The report also called for doubling energy efficiency, urging targets with specific time frames, strong regulatory frameworks, financial incentives and awareness campaigns.
– With YOUSAF SABA and KATE ABNETT, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
