Scientists warn of dramatic implications of Asian climate change
Updated
Climate scientists are warning that the Himalayan glaciers are melting at such an alarming rate that in two decades they might cover only 20-percent of their current area.
The retreat of glaciers worldwide is a visible evidence that global climate change is already underway, and nowhere more so, than on the Tibetan Plateau.
Presenter: Sen Lam,
Speaker: Dr Katherine Morton, environment political scientist, International Relations, at the Australian National University
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MORTON: There's something like 45,000 glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and there many different predictions in terms of the rate at which the glaciers are actually melting. There tends to be now a general consensus amongst climate scientists that the general trend is one of fairly rapid retreat, and predictions are now around the figure of something like glaciers reducing to 20 per cent of their current area by 2030.
LAM: And of course the big melt does not affect just the Tibetan Plateau does it, I mean when glaciers melt I guess they affect practically all of south Asia?
MORTON: That's exactly right; I mean there are huge, dramatic adverse implications here in terms of bio diversity, people, livelihoods, long term implications for water, food security, energy security and up to sort of a quarter of the world's population essentially will be affected by this.
LAM: Much has been made of rising sea levels and their impact on Pacific islands and Pacific islanders. How does climate change threaten the people living on the Tibetan Plateau?
MORTON: I think largely one of the major concerns really is the water, because on the Tibetan Plateau you essentially have the largest storage of fresh water resources, outside of the polar ice caps, and that's incredibly important in terms of the future livelihoods of people, both at the local level and downstream in the surrounding countries that very much depend on water for agriculture purposes, and also of course for power generation as well as drinking water.
LAM: You were in Tibet recently, can you tell me if you noticed any perceptible effects of climate change on the people of Tibet?
MORTON: One of the immediate impacts that you can see is a drying of the grasslands; essentially you're seeing rapid desertification, particularly I was working at the source of the Yellow River, which is up to about a third now is in semi-desert conditions. And the implication of this is that people who are living in that area are now having to move and be resettled in ecological migrant villages. This is under a government controlled scheme, called the Ecological Migration Scheme, which aims essentially to resettle most of the Tibetan nomads that are living in the source area of the three major rivers; of the Yellow, the Yangtse and the Mekong, and to resettle them by about 2011.
LAM: And as far as you know are the Chinese authorities sitting up and taking note of what's happening on the plateau?
MORTON: I think it's generally a big concern amongst government agencies in Beijing. I should say though that to date adaptation has been far behind mitigation, and I think probably that has a lot to do with the lead-up to Copenhagen as well as most attention now is on energy efficiency, the reduction of CO2 emissions, and less attention has been given to adaptation, it tends to be in relation to the effects on agriculture more broadly across China. And one of the problems with climate change on the Tibetan Plateau is that still there are many uncertainties involved, particularly in relation to the possible effects on the Asian monsoon, and how that will affect variation in precipitation. Still much more research to be done, and that said there is now the beginnings if you like of more research efforts around trying to come up with a response. But I would say that it's very much at an early stage at the moment, and there's very limited trans-boundary cooperation taking place.
LAM: And what should that response be do you think, if western countries or the richer nations decide to help, what do you think should be a first step?
MORTON: I think one of the issues is that we really need to have a better understanding of what's actually taking place. One can throw money at something but it's much more helpful to have a very clear and comprehensive understanding of what the problems actually are. And I should say that actually fairly quite recently where ice-core data has been taken from the Suku(?) glacier in Tibet, which has revealed some of these dramatic temperature rises over the past five decades. And therefore it's really still quite recent that understanding has started to develop over what's happening, and therefore there has been quite a slow response to date.
