Sit-in against Modi over graft
AT LEAST a third of the ice in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush would thaw this century as temperatures rose, disrupting river flows vital for growing crops from China to India, scientists said yesterday.
Vast glaciers made the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region – home to the world’s highest peaks topped by Mount Everest and K2 – a “third pole” behind Antarctica and the Arctic region, they said.
“This is the climate crisis you haven’t heard of,” said Philippus Wester of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), who led the report. “Global warming is on track to transform the frigid, glacier-covered mountain peaks of the HKH – cutting across eight countries – to bare rocks in a little less than a century.”
The report, by 210 authors, said that more than a third of the ice in the region would melt by 2100 even if governments took tough action to limit global warming under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
And two-thirds of the ice could vanish if governments failed to rein in greenhouse gas emissions this century.
“To me this is the most worrying thing,” Wester told Reuters on the sidelines of an event to launch the report in Kathmandu.
Glaciers have thinned and retreated across most parts of the region since the 1970s. Ice in the HKH region would push up sea levels by 1.5 metres if it all melted, said Eklabya Sharma, deputy BAGHDAD: Iraqi President Barham Salih said yesterday that US President Donald Trump did not ask Iraq’s permission for US troops stationed there to “watch Iran”.
US troops in Iraq are there as part of an agreement between the two countries with a specific mission of combating terrorism, Salih said.
Trump said it was important to keep a US military presence in Iraq so that Washington can keep a director general of ICIMOD.
The region stretches 3500km across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
The study said the thaw would disrupt rivers including the Yangtze, Mekong, Indus and Ganges, where farmers relied on glacier melt water in the dry season. About 250 million people live in the mountains and 1.65 billion people in river valleys below.
Changes in river flows could also harm hydropower production and cause more erosion and landslides in the mountains.
But more research was needed to gauge exactly how glaciers affected distant crops, said Wouter Buytaert of Imperial College in London, who was close eye on Iran. “Do not pursue your own policy priorities, we live here,” Salih said. Iraq is in a difficult position as tensions between its two biggest allies, the US and Iran, increase. | Reuters not involved in the study.
“While glacier melt water propagates downstream, it mixes with water from other sources such as direct rainfall, wetlands, and groundwater, up to a point where the impact of glacier melting may become negligible,” he said.
The authors said that people living in small island states were often viewed as the most vulnerable to climate change because of rising sea levels.
“It’s not just occupants of the world’s islands that are suffering,” said Dasho Rinzin Dorji, an ICIMOD board member from Bhutan. He said that mountain regions were also extremely vulnerable as “climate hotspots”. | Reuters THE chief minister of a big Indian state led a sit-in yesterday in a stand-off with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over a corruption investigation she condemned as a vendetta, as political tension rises in the run-up to a general election.
Mamata Banerjee, the firebrand chief minister of West Bengal, began the protest overnight in the state capital Kolkata after federal police swooped on the home of a police commissioner as part of an investigation into Ponzi schemes that defrauded thousands of small investors.
Banerjee, who leads a regional party trying to forge a front against Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), accused the federal government of trying to undermine state powers.
West Bengal, which sends the third largest number of legislators to the lower house of parliament, has become a battleground state as the Hindu nationalist BJP looks to make inroads in the east to make up for any losses in its northern heartland.
Over the past several months, disputes have erupted between the BJP and Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and there have been allegations that hardline Hindu groups were trying to stir up tension with minority Muslims to win votes.
“The highest levels of the BJP leadership are doing the worst kind of political vendetta,” Banerjee said in a tweet.
“They are misusing power to take control of the police and destroy all institutions.” | Reuters