Climate Change in the Himalayas is a major topic of worry for climate watchers in the Subcontinent and across the world. The Himalayas have the largest deposits of snow and ice in the world outside the Polar Regions and is often referred to as the ‘Third Pole’ and also as the ‘Water Tower of Asia’.
Climate Change in the Himalayas: The Basic Possible Impacts
The issue of Climate Change in the Himalayas is drawing forward many observations, with observations of warming in the Himalayas indicating that mean temperatures are rising with a higher rate in the Nepalese as well as the Chinese side of the Himalayas, which is accompanied with higher warming in the Himalayas overall relative to some other regions of the world. Experts are worried over what climate change might entail for the Himalayan region.
In the western Indian Himalayas, a declining trend has also been observed for the monsoons with an increasing trend in the eastern Indian Himalayas. In many parts of the Tibetan Plateau, increased stream flow and precipitation have been observed. Glaciers in both the eastern and the western Himalayas however, are mostly retreating, although for now the majority of glaciers such as the Karakoram are stable or are advancing at a slow pace. The expansion of glacial lakes is also being reported, most notably in Nepal and Bhutan.
With predictions for increases in overall temperature and monsoon precipitation due to Climate Change, with reduced winter precipitation in the future, it is expected that glacial discharge will eventually lessen, leading to long term shortages in water supply in glaciated basins. This could lead to shortages of water for example for irrigation and hydro-power generation. In the short term devastating economic losses could entail from more intense flooding – the most common natural calamity in the Subcontinent.
Xu et al. (2009) analyzed Climate Change trends and concluded that they indicate that the impacts of Climate Change in the Himalayas could lead to an eventual cascading effect on all regions affected by the Himalayas. There are indications that Climate Change in the Himalayas could entail a number of effects, including the availability of water in terms of the amounts of water withheld or discharged, that could also be dependent on altered seasonality.
Biodiversity could also be affected, in terms of effects on endemics species populations and their distribution and also in terms of altered relationships between predator and prey. Ecosystem boundary shifts could also be observed, especially in the case of changes in the ecosystems at high elevation and in movements and alterations to tree-lines. Global feedback systems could also be affected, and monsoonal shifts and losses in terms of soil carbon could for example be observed. Climate Change in the Himalayas could also have socio-economic impacts such as changes due to altered water supplies and changes in agricultural production.
Observations and Projections
Although the most frequently reported impact of Climate Change in the Himalayas is glacial retreat, and its implications for the flow of water downstream, there can be numerous other possible impacts due to Climate Change in the Himalayas. As described above, Climate Change can have numerous other cascading effects on the Himalayas and its connected regions if we factor in other concomitant effects of Climate Change in the Himalayas such as changes in precipitation, habitats, the carbon cycle, etc.
In a major prediction in terms of Climate Change in the Himalayas, the IPCC is reported to have controversially stated that Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than in any other part of the world and predicted that they would disappear by 2035 if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. This was followed by a rebuttal by the Ministry of Environment & Forests, GoI that a large mountain glacier would take between 100 to 1000 years to respond to warming.
Observations of the wastage of Himalayan glaciers are difficult and as such of rate of Himalayan glacier retreat because of the considerable difficulties posed by the high altitudes and the remoteness of the Himalayan region. It is this lack of comprehensive observational data that has led to certain speculations based on in situ observations and simulated projections of climate change. The associations used are usually of well observed glaciers and their working under Euro-American climes. This method is inadequate in some site-specific queries and can be overlooked such as the impacts on surface albedo by the seasonal cycle of precipitation which can in turn impact the retreat of Himalayan glaciers.
It is observed that glaciers, snow and ice that cover over 17 per cent of the Greater Himalayas are receding at a faster rate than in the rest of the world. This rate has witnessed an increase in recent years, and if warming continues at the current rate, studies indicate that Climate Change in the Himalayas could entail as a possible long term effect, an 80 per cent shrinkage of glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau by 2030.
The processes in turn that determine their run off and flow downstream are complex, but some general predictions can be made when it comes to the question of discharge. It is most likely that increased warming and the corresponding melting will lead to increased discharge in the short term. However, over time as the retreat of glaciers and frozen material becomes more complete, it is expected that discharge will become more limited, particularly in the event that decreased precipitation takes place.
In terms of the impacts of Climate Change in the Himalayas on precipitation and moisture, there can be various influences depending on the location of sites in the Greater Himalayas and their distance from sources of moisture. A variety of other determinants have also to be taken into account however, such as global systems of atmospheric circulation, orographic influences, etc. More intense precipitation can increase the risk of water-related hazards such as landslides, flash floods and flow of debris in the Himalayas, and these are projected to increase in frequency as precipitation becomes more intense in certain locations. The decrease in frozen material in the long term is also expected to influence precipitation, with a shorter dry season expected to bring about massive changes to flora and fauna.
Biodiversity can also be a flag-point issue with biodiversity in the Himalayan region being higher than the global average. Changes in hydrological patterns can affect biodiversity, especially among plants in the eastern Himalayas, a region having the richest plant biodiversity. One of the earliest responses to Climate Change in the Himalayas could be changes in plant phenology, or the life cycle of plants and associated species. Plant reproduction for example, could be impacted by warmer temperatures in terms of the time in which leaf flush and flowering occur. Rhododendrons in the Himalayas for example, are flowering a month earlier than usual. Disruptions in relationships with pollinators could also adversely impact alpine plants and animal species dependent on these plants. The shortened length of the dry season could also become an issue and in some cases, flowering might fail to initiate, especially at the lower altitudes.
It is also very likely that pest populations such as those of locusts and grasshoppers could increase with the increase in temperatures. With the onset of more the more palpable effects of Climate Change in the Himalayas, changed predator-prey relations could also become a feature, with increases or decreases in the populations of multiple species, leading to changed equations in the food web. Apart from plants, observations show that existing species are tracking climactic shifts and are shifting in terms of their geographical distribution. However, broader geographical migration does not present as vast a scope in the Himalayas because of topographical limitations. Studies of Himalayan species must keep track of these shifts in populations, which are also expected to be influenced by plant adaptations.
With the composition and distribution of vegetation types in the Himalayas expected to change due to changes in the water cycle and plant phenology, the species most likely to be palpably affected by this shift are endemic species found mostly at the higher altitudes. Species endemism increases with an increase in altitude in the Himalayas. It is expected that with a 1oC rise in temperature, isotherms could shift by about 160 m in altitude, which could severely affect higher altitude alpine ecosystems. Between 1923 and 2003 photographs indicate that northwest Yunnan witnessed a rise in the tree line by 67 m and in tree limits by 45 m.
All these represent the tip of the iceberg of what could become the cascading effects of Climate Change in the Himalayas leading to certain fundamental alterations to ecosystems in the Himalayas. It is not possible at this time to enumerate all of the associated responses, and we have touched upon what could be the immediate cause and effect correlations that could be possible.
The Eastern Himalayas in the Present Scenario
The range of the eastern Himalayas extends from the Kaligandaki Valley in central Nepal to northwestern Yunnan in China. In India, the Eastern Himalayas comprise of parts of the north-eastern states, Sikkim and the Himalayan region of North Bengal.
The region in total consists of 3 global biodiversity hotspots. The difference in altitudes over short distances can exhibit ecosystems ranging from tropical lowlands to cold deserts in high mountains with an incredible biodiversity in vegetation. Out of this biodiversity, a high proportion of species of flora and fauna in the eastern Himalayas are endemic species. Many of these species are largely unique to their habitats, especially in India’s north eastern states.
Consistent warming trends have been observed in the eastern Himalayas in the last 100 years. It is observed that with the rise in temperatures, a decline is being observed in areas under permafrost and glaciers in the eastern Himalayas. The chief source of moisture is increasingly shifting from frozen matter to precipitation events. The problem however, is one of the remoteness of areas in the eastern Himalayas, especially in the Tibetan Plateau and many parts of India’s north eastern region, and there is a great shortage of observations of Climate Change in the Himalayas to form a most detailed analysis.
The Western Himalayas in the Present Scenario
The western Himalayas extend from Badakhshan in north eastern Afghanistan, onwards to Jammu & Kashmir till central Nepal. In India, the western Himalayas form the chief part of the land areas of the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed in its Fourth Assessment Report that there was a clear lack of adequate data to support complete assessments for the Hindu-Kush region of the western Himalayas. However, in the same report the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, which was subsequently refuted by many other sources. The statement was later retracted by the IPCC but spoke of how more detailed research was needed in the region if more complete and certain assessments of Climate Change in the Himalayas are to be made, given the remoteness of many locations in the western Himalayas.
If the eastern Himalayas is a global biodiversity hotspot, the western Himalayas is known as a global Climate Change hotspot. Glacial retreat is a massive issue in the western Himalayas and is garnering attention over possible downstream flows, with ramifications for ecosystems downstream beyond the Himalayas. Given how economies and populations in the Subcontinent are hugely dependent also on agricultural productivity, this is an issue that requires much more comprehensive data collection and research. The total area expected to be directly affected by Climate Change in the Himalayas is given below, with the mountainous regions and the river basins included.
Fig: Total area expected to be directly affected by Climate Change in the Himalayas
Source: Surender P. Singh et al.
Endnote
In terms of possibilities, other than the impacts of Climate Change in the Himalayas on the environment, the effects are also likely to impact in concatenation on human life as well. Although Climate Change in the Himalayas could progress gradually and humans have the tendency to adapt, the costs might be immediate and unpredictable. For example, more frequent flash floods and landslides might result in irreversible loss of human lives and increase risks to living in the mountains. In the long term droughts might have more severe effects due to glacial retreat and impact agricultural production. The chances of the extinction of certain species and its cascading effects might subliminally bring about massive changes in how life is carried out on Himalayan slopes.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.