Scientists warn rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers will impact us all



Arshad R. Zargar
Thu, June 22, 2023 

New Delhi — Glaciers in the Hindu Kush region of the Himalaya mountains are melting at the fastest rate ever and could shed as much as 80% of their ice by the end of this century if global warming continues unchecked, a group of international scientists warned in an alarming new report.

The study says the melting of the glaciers will directly impact billions of people in Asia — causing floods, landslides, avalanches and food shortages as farmland is inundated. Indirectly, the melting of such a vast reserve of fresh water could impact countries as far away as the United States, even the whole of humanity, according to the report by the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

The academic paper warns the ice and snow reserves in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) region are melting at an "unprecedented" rate and that the environmental changes to the sensitive region are "largely irreversible."

Glaciers are seen in the Pamir Mountains, a range in Central Asia formed by the junction of the Himalayas, Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun and Hindu Kush mountain ranges, as seen in a file photo taken from the Karakoram Highway, in Xinjiang, China. / Credit: The Pamir Mountains are a mountain range in Central Asia formed by the junction of the Himalayas, Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They are among the world's highest mountains and since Victorian times they have been known as 

The HKH region spans roughly 2,175 miles, from Afghanistan to Myanmar, and is home to the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest. It contains the largest volume of ice on Earth outside the two polar regions and is the source of water for 12 rivers that flow through 16 Asian nations.

Those rivers provide fresh water to some 240 million people living in the HKH region, and about 1.65 billion people further downstream, the report says.

For all of those people, the melting of the glaciers would be a disaster. The report says they will face extreme weather events and crop loss that will force mass-migration.

Deadly floods and avalanches in the Himalayan region have already increased over the past decade or so, and scientists have linked the greater frequency and intensity of the disasters to climate change and global warming.

The ICIMOD report lays out three potential scenarios for the glaciers of the HKH: If there is a 1.5-2 degree Celsius increase in the Earth's average temperature above pre-industrial levels, the glaciers will lose 30% to 50% of their ice volume by 2100. If the global temperature rises by 3 degrees Celsius, the glaciers could lose 75% of their ice and, with a 4-degree rise, the researchers say there will be a loss of up to 80% of the ice in the HKH.

"These projections are of very high confidence as we say in the scientific language," Dr. Philippus Wester, the ICIMOD's Chief Scientist on Water Resources Management and the lead editor of the report, told CBS News. "In layman's language, it means we have no doubt whatsoever that at 2 degrees Celsius global warming, we will lose 50% of the glacial ice mass in the region."

The report notes that the Himalayan glaciers lost ice at a rate 65% faster between 2010 and 2019 than over the previous decade (2001-2010).

"This is a lot, this is alarming," Wester told CBS News."On human time scales, we have never seen glacial melt this rapid, this fast… this is unprecedented."

Other research shows Mount Everest's glaciers have lost the equivalent of 2,000 years' worth of ice over just the past three decades. In a 2019 report, the ICIMOD said the Himalayan glaciers of the region would lose at least one third of their ice if the average global temperature was limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But with new technology and more data becoming available over the last five years, the scientists found circumstances worse than they expected, Wester said.

Global impact of the melting Himalayan glaciers

The impacts of the rapid glacial melt in the Himalayas will be felt around the world, Izabella Koziell, deputy director general of the ICIMOD, CBS News this week [video available at the top of this article].

"Even if this feels remote to us sitting far away, it is going to affect us — whether that is through mass people movement or sea-level rise. When the glaciers in the Himalayas melt, the ice sheets in Greenland, Arctic and Antarctic are also melting. This means there will be sea level rise, there will be quite dramatic changes in ocean circulation as a result of increase in fresh water into oceans, and this will have huge impacts on us," Koziell said.

"The people who are losing their livelihoods, of which there are 2 billion people — that's a quarter of the world's population — where will they go? They will have to go and find safer places and we will have to offer those safer places for them to live," Koziell said.

Earlier this month, scientists warned at the Bonn Climate Change Conference of the worrying speed and scale of ice-melt worldwide. Another study, published last year, said the Arctic could start to see periods during the summer without any ice remaining at all by 2030, even if emissions are cut drastically.

"Clarion call" for urgent climate action

Scientists are calling for urgent action to slow global warming to preserve as much of the ice mass in the Himalayas as possible.

"To prevent additional ice loss, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced through the use of clean and renewable energy sources… cooperation among Himalayan nations and international organizations is required," Professor Anjal Prakash, an author on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told CBS News.

"We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as we can. The less melt we have, the better it is because it takes such a long time to recover from that loss," the ICIMOD's lead editor Wester told CBS News.

The U.N.'s IPCC says limiting warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025, and be reduced by 43% by 2030. The world is not currently on course to keep those targets within reach.

"This is a clarion call," Wester told CBS News. "The world is not doing enough because we are still seeing an increase in the emissions year-on-year. We are not even at the point of a turnaround in terms of emissions."

"The change we are causing now will not stop even if we keep emissions at current levels," Koziell told CBS News, but she added that "all hope is not lost."

"If we commit to decarbonisation now, we still have an open window. We seriously need to keep that window open," Koziell said. "We need to seriously commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and whatever investments we make now, will be a benefit for the future."

Afghanistan: Power struggle in the Hindu Kush

NATO forces are withdrawing from Afghanistan. But Kabul's neighbors have conflicting interests. The omens are not good for a country that has often suffered from its strategic location. What lies ahead for Afghanistan?

As the NATO troops withdraw, the problems remain

For over four decades now, Afghanistan has been ravaged by war. In all that time, one thing has been unchanged: Afghanistan remains a "graveyard for empires," a view once again highlighted by the pullout of US forces and their allies. And one factor is a cruel constant in this country's desperately troubled history: its central strategic location.

Afghanistan is a country of many peoples and even more neighbors — both directly and indirectly. And they could not be more different: from Iran in the west, the two hostile nuclear powers Pakistan and India in the east, China in the northeast, the oil- and gas-rich states of central Asia in the north.

For a variety of different reasons, war-ravaged Afghanistan is of crucial interest to all of these players. And for all of them, the strategic options will change when — after a military intervention that lasted 20 years — there are no longer any Western forces stationed in the Hindu Kush.

No wonder, then, that these neighboring countries are beginning to step up their activities. Thomas Ruttig of the Afghan Analysts Network does not expect any significant calming of the situation in the near future.

"The individual countries have seriously conflicting interests and many of them are playing out bilateral or multilateral rivalries or tensions on Afghan territory," Ruttig told DW.

Indian and Pakistan: Dangerous disputes

Regional tensions are particularly intense between India and Pakistan. India is one of the Afghan government's main allies and, not only because of its connection with the Kashmiri terrorist organizations including Lashkar-e Taiba, Delhi views the Taliban as a threat to its own security.

Meanwhile, despite all the denials from Islamabad, Pakistan continues to see the Taliban as "its best card in the Afghanistan game," said Ruttig. He believes that Islamabad sees Afghanistan as its own backyard and therefore tries all it can to have a profound influence on how the country is governed.

"As far as Afghanistan is concerned, it would not be advisable to invest too much faith in Pakistan's goodwill," said Ruttig.

Concern ahead of US troop departure

Pakistan's regional influence could get an additional boost, with the country being talked about as a possible location for a new US military base. "This is being hotly debated in Washington," said Andrew Watkins, an Afghanistan analyst from the International Crisis Group.

"What we're talking about is the deployment of air assets and not sizable ground forces — about maintaining the ability to conduct a drone war or even deploy standard Air Force assets. Because that is highly controversial in domestic politics in Pakistan, it will be something that they do in relative secret and that most of us will only learn about years after the fact," he said.

While the Pakistani government has publicly denied any intention of giving US forces access to its military facilities, the Taliban came out at the end of May with a preventive statement urging Afghanistan's neighbors not to host US bases.


Pakistan sees the Taliban as its 'best card' in Afghanistan, as Prime Minister Imran Khan meets with Taliban leaders

China: Security 'free rider'?

For its part, Beijing views the US withdrawal from Afghanistan with very mixed feelings. Gu Xuewu, director of the Center for Global Studies in Bonn, Germany, said that on the one hand, China welcomes the decision to pull back forces from its immediate neighborhood. At the same time, however, China has profited from US efforts over the last two decades to contain the influence of the militant Islamist Taliban.

"The main fear is Xinjiang. As far as I can see, for Beijing everything else is secondary," said Gu. Xinjiang is a northwestern region of China, inhabited by the Muslim Uyghur people, which borders Afghanistan.

Islamist Uyghur groups, also operating in Afghanistan, are viewed as a serious concern in China — above all since the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) has been active in the Hindu Kush, said Angela Stanzel of the Berlin think tank German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

"IS has directly threatened China with retaliation for the persecution of the Muslim minority in China itself," she said. "Which again exacerbates Beijing's anxiety about a power vacuum in Afghanistan that could give IS the territory it needs to spread its presence in China and above all across central Asia."

The Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan was hit by a suicide attack by an Uyghur group in August 2016

In the past, China was often described as a "free rider" in Afghanistan. Beijing, it was suggested, was allowing NATO forces to be responsible for the security of its economic interests. This initially included, for example, plans for investment in the exploitation of the raw materials that bitterly poor Afghanistan has at its disposal in large quantities that, however, simply go unused.

Nevertheless, Stanzel said there is no reason to believe that Beijing will step in and guarantee security in the region after the US withdrawal.
Mixed reaction in Tehran

In Tehran, the response to the American withdrawal from the Hindu Kush has been ambivalent. The undoubted foreign policy priority for Iran is the conflict with the United States, and in western Afghanistan US forces and their bases had been shifted close to the Iranian border.

"Iran wants to see the United States fail in any of its regional endeavors," said Crisis Group expert Watkins. "And Iran wants to see the US withdraw from the region because it also views the US presence in Afghanistan as an encroachment. But what they don't want is to see the potential for total collapse or for a humanitarian disaster."

In recent decades, millions of Afghans have sought refuge in Iran as well as in Pakistan.

Uprooted by war, Afghan refugees have found shelter in a camp in Iran

"Tehran actually appreciated the stabilizing impact of Western forces — even if it is something that the Iranian authorities would never have admitted to," said Ruttig of the Afghan Analysts Network.

This may also be applicable to Moscow. In the Russian imagination, Afghanistan has since the 19th century been seen as a southern strategic flank, as a gateway to the Indian Ocean, as a backdrop for rivalries with the West — or all of this together.

For a long time, following the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan in 1989, Moscow kept its distance from the region. In the meantime, however, Russia has again established relations with a number of players in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.

Moscow's interests are focused on security across its southern flank, measures to prevent a resurgence of Islamic movements and participation in any attempt to reach a political solution to the conflict.

More than 30 years ago, Soviet forces left Afghanistan after years of bloody combat

Hope for Afghanistan's future?

There will be no resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan unless it has the backing of the nations of the region. But, according to Watkins, each country "could put a finger on the scale and throw the entire situation in Afghanistan out of balance."

But Delhi and Islamabad do have one shared interest: both are looking to secure access to the vast energy resources of Central Asia. Since the 1990s, there have been negotiations concerning a possible pipeline project to bring gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan and all the way to India. The acronym for the project is TAPI, after the names of the four nations involved.

A visit by a Taliban delegation to Turkmenistan at the beginning of February was interpreted as a sign that the pipeline project is still viable. The Taliban reiterated their support for the pipeline and promised to guarantee its security.

"For Afghanistan and all the other participants, one can only hope that this project will be realized — in a peaceful environment," said Ruttig. "It is the only realistic large-scale economic project that they have got."

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDU KUSH 

Himalayan icecap is melting faster than predicted

 

Himalayan icecap is melting faster than predicted

The mountains will lose 80 percent of snow and ice in this century

Written byNepali Times

Posted 1 July 2023 

Imja Glacier near Mt Everest has turned into a big lake in the past 20 years. Photo: Kiril Rusev via Nepali Times. Used with permission.

This article was originally published in Nepali Times and an edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.

Four years after scientists put out a worrying report about the melting Himalayan icecap, they have now warned that the problem is even more serious than earlier thought.

The new study provides what is said to be the most accurate assessment of snow, ice, and permafrost in the Himalayas to date: that Himalayan glaciers could lose up to 80 percent of their ice mass by the end of this century. The findings cite grave consequences, not just for the mountains, but for the nearly 2 billion people living downstream in Asian countries that depend on water from the world’s highest mountains.

Read More: The climate crisis is a water crisis in the Himalayas

The Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development ICIMOD had brought out the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment in 2019. But the new report says Himalayan glaciers disappeared 65 percent faster in the 2010s than in the previous decades. At that rate, the melting will accelerate in the coming decades.

The Water, Ice, Society, and Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HI-WISE) report draws on recent scientific advances to map out how melting snow, ice, and permafrost in the mountains will affect water, ecosystems, and society in the Himalayan watershed.

The peer-reviewed study warns of grave consequences to the region that provides fresh water to a quarter of the world's population and is home to four global biodiversity hotspots.

The HI-WISE report projects “peak water” by mid-century after which there will be less and less water available on Himalayan rivers for irrigation, household use, industries and hydropower. At the same time, extreme weather due to climate change will also increase the risk of landslides and floods in this geologically and ecologically fragile mountain region.

The south face of Saipal Himal in western Nepal, showing shrinking ice over the past 15 years. Image via Nepali Times. Used with permission.

“Climate inaction is accelerating,” warns Saleem ul Huq of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh. “This report shows that the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. We must act now to protect this region and its people.”

The report says the impact of the melting cryosphere on fragile mountain habitats is particularly acute, and it will have cascading impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity.

“With 67 percent of the HKH's eco-regions and 39 percent of the region's four global biodiversity hotspots outside protected areas, the HKH’s extraordinary biodiversity is particularly vulnerable to climate impacts,” the report warns.

Some 240 million people who live in the Himalayas and another 1.65 billion downstream in 16 countries of Asia will be affected by water shortages as the Himalayan icecap melts. Farmers in the Himalayas are already facing crop loss, fodder shortages and livestock deaths due to extreme weather.

“The hazards are becoming more complex and devastating,” says the report that was prepared by 35 scientists from 12 countries.

The report urges policymakers to prepare for the cascading impacts of climate change that provides fresh water to a quarter of the world’s population. It calls for urgent international support and regional cooperation for inevitable, near-term loss and damage, and to help communities adapt.

Himalayan glaciers could lose 80% of their volume if global warming not controlled, study finds

BENGALURU, India (AP) — Glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates across the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain ranges and could lose up to 80% of their current volume this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren't sharply reduced, according to a new report.

The report Tuesday from Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development warned that flash floods and avalanches would grow more likely in coming years, and that the availability of fresh water would be affected for nearly 2 billion people who live downstream of 12 rivers that originate in the mountains.

Ice and snow in the Hindu Kush Himalayan ranges is an important source of water for those rivers, which flow through 16 countries in Asia and provide fresh water to 240 million people in the mountains and anther 1.65 billion downstream.

“The people living in these mountains who have contributed next to nothing to global warming are at high risk due to climate change,” said Amina Maharjan, a migration specialist and one of the report’s authors. “Current adaptation efforts are wholly insufficient, and we are extremely concerned that without greater support, these communities will be unable to cope.”

Various earlier reports have found that the cryosphere — regions on Earth covered by snow and ice — are among the worst affected by climate change. Recent research found that Mount Everest's glaciers, for example, have lost 2,000 years of ice in just the past 30 years.

“We map out for the first time the linkages between cryosphere change with water, ecosystems and society in this mountain region,” Maharjan said.

Among the key findings from Tuesday's report are that the Himalayan glaciers disappeared 65% faster since 2010 than in the previous decade and reducing snow cover due to global warming will result in reduced fresh water for people living downstream. The study found that 200 glacier lakes across these mountains are deemed dangerous, and the region could see a significant spike in glacial lake outburst floods by the end of the century.

The study found that communities in the mountain regions are being affected by climate change far more than many other parts of the world. It says changes to the glaciers, snow and permafrost of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region driven by global warming are “unprecedented and largely irreversible."

Effects of climate change are already felt by Himalayan communities sometimes acutely. Earlier this year the Indian mountain town of Joshimath began sinking and residents had to be relocated within days.

“Once ice melts in these regions, it's very difficult to put it back to its frozen form,” said Pam Pearson, director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, who was not involved with the report.

She added, “It’s like a big ship in the ocean. Once the ice starts going, it’s very hard to stop. So, with glaciers, especially the big glaciers in the Himalayas, once they start losing mass, that’s going to continue for a really long time before it can stabilize.”

Pearson said it is extremely important for Earth's snow, permafrost and ice to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed to at the 2015 Paris climate conference.

“I get the sense that most policymakers don't take the goal seriously but, in the cryosphere, irreversible changes are already happening," she said.

___

Follow AP’s climate change coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Sibi Arasu, The Associated Press

Himalayan glaciers could lose 80% of their volume if global warming isn't controlled, study finds


 A new report Tuesday, June 20, 2023, from a Nepal-based research organization finds that water security for nearly 2 billion people living downstream of rivers that originate in the Himalayan ranges will likely be threatened by the end of this century due to rapid glacier melt if global warming is not controlled. 

(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)


SIBI ARASU
Mon, June 19, 2023 

BENGALURU, India (AP) — Glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates across the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain ranges and could lose up to 80% of their volume this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren't sharply reduced, according to a report.

The report Tuesday from Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development warned that flash floods and avalanches would grow more likely in coming years, and that the availability of fresh water could be curtailed for nearly 2 billion people who live downstream of 12 rivers that originate in the mountains.

Ice and snow in the Hindu Kush Himalayan ranges are an important source of water for those rivers, which flow through 16 countries in Asia and provide fresh water to 240 million people in the mountains and another 1.65 billion downstream.

“The people living in these mountains who have contributed next to nothing to global warming are at high risk due to climate change,” said Amina Maharjan, a migration specialist and one of the report’s authors. “Current adaptation efforts are wholly insufficient, and we are extremely concerned that without greater support, these communities will be unable to cope.”

Various earlier reports have found that the cryosphere — regions on Earth covered by snow and ice — are among the worst affected by climate change. Recent research found that Mount Everest's glaciers, for example, have lost 2,000 years of ice in just the past 30 years.

“We map out for the first time the linkages between cryosphere change with water, ecosystems and society in this mountain region,” Maharjan said.

Among the key findings from Tuesday's report are that the Himalayan glaciers disappeared 65% faster since 2010 than in the previous decade, and that reducing snow cover due to global warming will result in reduced fresh water for people living downstream. The study found that 200 glacier lakes across these mountains are deemed dangerous, and the region could see a significant spike in glacial lake outburst floods by the end of the century.

The study found that communities in the mountain regions are being affected by climate change far more than many other parts of the world. It says changes to the glaciers, snow and permafrost of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region driven by global warming are “unprecedented and largely irreversible.”

Effects of climate change are already felt by Himalayan communities, sometimes acutely. Earlier this year the Indian mountain town of Joshimath began sinking and residents had to be relocated within days.

“Once ice melts in these regions, it's very difficult to put it back to its frozen form,” said Pam Pearson, director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, who was not involved with the report.

She added, “It’s like a big ship in the ocean. Once the ice starts going, it’s very hard to stop. So, with glaciers, especially the big glaciers in the Himalayas, once they start losing mass, that’s going to continue for a really long time before it can stabilize.”

Pearson said it is extremely important for Earth's snow, permafrost and ice to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed to at the 2015 Paris climate conference.

“I get the sense that most policymakers don't take the goal seriously but, in the cryosphere, irreversible changes are already happening," she said.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

___

Follow AP’s climate change coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

‘Fight to the death’ looms in Panjshir Valley
Ahmad Massoud, leader of the defiant National Resistance Front, claims to have some 9,000 fighters

By DAVE MAKICHUK

AUGUST 26, 2021

The Panjshir Valley, in the Hindu Kush mountains north of Kabul, has long been the heart of military resistance in Afghanistan and looks like it is becoming the centre of a gathering of “resistance” forces against Taliban rule. Credit: AFP photo.

It’s only a matter of when the attack comes.

And when it does it could be the greatest battle, and possibly the bloodiest, that Afghanistan has ever seen.

You see, thirty-three of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces fell to the Taliban over the span of two weeks in early August.

But one region, has not.

The sole area that has resisted Taliban encroachment has been the province of Panjshir, located in a valley at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains.

The valley’s name translates to “five lions,” although other translations claim its name may refer to five mountain peaks located down the length of the valley.

Led by Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, he claims to have some 9,000 available fighters, as well as hundreds of military vehicles and five helicopters, Trevor Filseth of The National Interest reported.

And while Panjshir’s defenders have been strengthened by the arrival of thousands of soldiers from the now-defunct Afghan National Army, Massoud’s position appears to be militarily indefensible, analysts say.

The valley is fully surrounded by Taliban territory and they are greatly outnumbered.

The 32-year-old Massoud, who has dreams of following in his “father’s footsteps,” said his group is pushing for a new system of government in Afghanistan — an open and democratic system — but is prepared to fight if needed.

Without a comprehensive power-sharing agreement, Massoud has warned that a new and bloody civil war is inevitable.

“We confronted the Soviet Union, and we will be able to confront the Taliban,” a defiant Massoud told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya television channel.

While Taliban forces rolled over the country easily in just a couple weeks, they will likely encounter stiff, perhaps even fanatical, resistance.

An Agence France-Presse correspondent reported seeing “machine gun nests, mortars and surveillance posts fortified with sandbags” set up by the National Resistance Front to defend its positions in the Panjshir Valley.

In an op-ed published Wednesday in The Washington Post, Massoud said “America can still be a great arsenal of democracy” by supporting his fighters.

He said he has the forces to mount an effective resistance, but called on the United States to supply arms and ammunition to his militia.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” he said.

His father Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, led the strongest resistance against the Taliban from his stronghold in the valley northeast of Kabul until his assassination two days before Sept. 11, 2001.

Famed for its natural defences, the redoubt tucked into the Hindu Kush mountains never fell to the Taliban during the civil war of the 1990s, nor was it conquered by the Soviets a decade earlier, and is now Afghanistan’s last remaining holdout.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” wrote Ahmad Massoud in an op-ed published in the Washington Post. Credit: AFP photo.

T.E. Lawrence, the master of hit-and-run guerrilla warfare, would have been impressed.

The elder Massoud built his formidable reputation by holding out against repeated Soviet offensives in the 1980s, using his wits and the high mountain ranges.

He inflicted devastating ambushes on Russian supply convoys, even earning a grudging respect from several Soviet generals.

He would also warn the West about the threat of terrorism from al-Qaeda.

But while Massoud’s famous father could rely upon overland supply lines into Tajikistan, today, Ahmad Massoud has no method of resupplying except flights over Taliban territory.

The younger Massoud also has little military experience, though he was educated at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in Britain and King’s College, London, and earned a degree in war studies before returning to Afghanistan in 2016.

If and when, the Taliban launch a major offensive to take the region — and they will if talks do not succeed — they will also come up against many of the nation’s hardened, US-trained special-forces units, which did much of the hardest fighting against the Taliban during the conflict.

None of these guys are going to be laying down their arms anytime soon, for the basic reason they will be tortured and executed.

Sources say they are fierce, and will fight to the death if they have to.

As former UK prime minister Tony Blair said, it’s one thing to take Afghanistan, quite another to rule it.

Politically, Panjshir’s position was also strengthened with the arrival of Afghanistan’s former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who has since declared himself as the nation’s interim leader following the flight of President Ashraf Ghani to the United Arab Emirates.

In the following days, other Afghan leaders, such as Defense Minister Bismillah Khan and Ahmad Zia Massoud, Massoud’s uncle and a long-time leader within Panjshir, have gone to the valley.

Notorious Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum is also rumored to be present.

At 67, the greying Uzbek militia leader is not quite in the fighting shape of his youth — he has just returned from medical treatment in Turkey — but his desire to be on the frontline does not appear to have dimmed.

While some experts on Afghanistan have highlighted potential tensions between the leaders, Saleh and Massoud appear to be cooperating, and both men have resolved not to surrender to the Taliban.

“The Taliban will not last long if it continues on this path,” Massoud said, in a report from the UK’s Daily Mail.

In the face of superior forces and potential annihilation, Massoud spat: “We are ready to defend Afghanistan and we warn of a bloodshed.”

Inspired by past victories against the Soviets and the Taliban, Panjshiri soldiers have also spoken in recent days about “a fight to the death.”

But this time, the Taliban will be fully armed with new weapons secured from surrendering Afghan forces — guns, ammo, vehicles, helicopters and more.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that hundreds of Taliban fighters had traveled to Panjshir to suppress the anti-Taliban resistance with force, but did not offer any further details.

Both the Panjshir resistance and the Taliban initially committed to talks regarding Afghanistan’s future political system and the valley’s status, but these talks appear to have broken down.

While an early attempt to capture the province appeared to have been repelled by Massoud’s forces, with a loss of several hundred Taliban fighters, the Taliban remains in control of the surrounding areas, and appears to have retaken three villages near the entrance to the valley, according to BBC’s Yalda Hakim.

‘‘We’re waiting for some opportunity, some support,” Hamid Saifi, a former colonel in the Afghan National Army, and now a commander in Massoud’s resistance, told the New York Times by phone.

“Maybe some countries will be ready for this great work. So far, all countries we talked to are quiet. America, Europe, China, Russia, all of them are quiet.’’

Sources: The Daily Mail, The National Interest, BBC News, Hindustan Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Al Arabiya, Agence France-Presse, Al Jazeera, France 24

 

Compound hazards pose increased risk to highly populated regions in the Himalayas

Peer-Reviewed Publication

YALE UNIVERSITY

Most of the research concerned with hazards like flooding, landslides, or wildfires describes only one hazard at a time, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment report states that anthropogenic climate change is increasing the likelihood of compound hazards—events where more than one hazard interact with multiplicatively destructive consequences. A recent study has found that current urbanization trends in the Himalaya are exposing more and more people to risks from increasingly destructive compound hazards. 

In a paper published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, a global team of researchers led by Jack Rusk, a Master of Environmental Management student at the Yale School of the Environment, found that only a small proportion of the Himalaya region is susceptible to compounding threats from multiple hazards, yet almost half of the region’s population is concentrated in that high-risk area.

The paper, entitled “Multi-hazard susceptibility and exposure assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya,” shows that current patterns of urbanization are putting people in harm’s way while less hazardous landscapes remain more sparsely populated. “Our sobering realization is that urbanization processes are concentrating human settlement in these relatively smaller but highly hazardous areas,” says Karen C. Seto, Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at Yale School of the Environment and a co-author of the study. In mid-elevation valleys in the Hindu Kush region, the same conditions that correspond to multi-hazards are also major sites of urban growth.

Compounding hazards in the Himalaya take many forms. For example, climate change is causing more frequent and intense wildfires, which contribute to landslides by destabilizing slopes. Those landslides can dam waterways swelling from increased precipitation and glacial melt, leading to catastrophic flooding when the dam breaks. And high-magnitude earthquakes, like the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, can trigger landslides and floods together. The reality of compounding multi-hazards suggests that connections between hazards may be as impactful as any single hazard alone.

“It’s often stated that the Himalaya is a high-risk environment,” says Rusk. “But the difficulty of working across such a large area meant that patterns of risk weren’t previously understood. Contrary to studies that describe the entire region as highly hazardous, our study shows that the highest risk areas are relatively small.” 

Understanding these patterns of risk would not have been possible without a big data approach that connected on-the-ground observations of floods, wildfires, and landslides with satellite data collected from high in the atmosphere. Relatively few hazard incidents are documented in the Himalaya, so the team used machine learning techniques to infer patterns in the distribution of hazards from historical hazard information and environmental conditions described by satellite data. For floods, landslides, and wildfires, ten environmental conditions were tested. The results showed that multi-hazard risk was often concentrated in relatively hotter mid-elevation valleys with wet soils. Based on 2019 population estimates, this study shows over 36 million people (49% of the region’s population) living in areas highly susceptible to multi-hazards. 

The migration and mobility patterns shaping urbanization in the region are motivated by factors other than hazard risk, study co-author Sara Shneiderman, associate professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs/Institute of Asian Research and the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, says. 

“Urbanization in the Himalaya is driven by social processes as people seek economic, educational, and political opportunities,” says Shneiderman. “As people move across the region in search of sustainable livelihoods, they are tending to settle in areas at risk of compounding hazards.”

To reduce the tragic risks associated with compounding multi-hazards, approaches to risk reduction must continue to evolve. The interdisciplinary team of authors balanced a quantitative modeling approach with the insights of social scientists who live or have worked extensively in the region.

Co-author Mark Turin, associate professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and former Yale Himalaya Initiative Director, notes the uniquely broad and interdisciplinary approach taken by Rusk and the research team. 

“This study brings together transboundary approaches—pursuing issues as they move across political borders—with innovative transdisciplinary methodologies. I see much potential in integrating granular, site-specific ethnographic knowledge with broader scale computational and machine learning tools in service of complex research questions like those addressed in this paper.”

Building from this expertise, the paper emphasizes that effective disaster risk reduction must span from very large to very small scales. At the smallest scale, risk reduction strategies should consider the knowledge of individual residents. “Residents in multi-hazard environments,” the paper states, “have detailed knowledge of multi-hazard processes, and their knowledge should be central to mitigation planning efforts.” 

At larger scales, Amina Maharjan, Senior Specialist (Livelihoods and Migration) at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal, underscores the need for this transboundary study to motivate transboundary collaboration for disaster risk reduction: “Often in this region, disasters cross administrative and international boundaries, so disaster mitigation and risk reduction require a transboundary approach—saving lives and livelihoods are a humanitarian concern for which countries in the region must collaborate without delay.”

 

---

DOI

10.1016 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Multi-hazard susceptibility and exposure assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Sep-2021

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

How climate change is shifting the water cycle

Intense monsoons and fierce drought have one thing in common: the water cycle. Climate change and other human activity is disrupting this crucial system, which makes all life on Earth possible.

The hydrological cycle ensures a continuous movement of water through the Earth's land, seas 

and atmosphere

What is the water cycle?

Put simply, the water cycle — also known as the hydrological cycle — is the process by which water moves through the Earth's land, seas and atmosphere. Water in its three natural phases, be it gas, liquid or solid, forms part of the natural cycle that continuously refreshes the supply of water that we, and every other living thing, need to survive.

Of the world's finite supply of water, around 97% is salty. The remaining 3% is fresh water which we use for things like drinking, bathing or irrigating crops. Most of that, however, is out of reach, locked away in the ice or deep underground in aquifers. Only around 1% of the world's total water supply is readily available to sustain all life on Earth.

How does the water cycle work?

The water held in lakes, rivers, oceans and seas is constantly heated by the sun. As the surface warms, liquid water evaporates and becomes vapor, escaping into the atmosphere. Wind can speed up that evaporation process. Plants also release water vapor through the pores, or stoma, of their leaves and stems, in what's known as transpiration.

Once in the air, vapor begins to cool and condense around tiny, suspended particles of dust, smoke or other pollutants, and forms clouds. These clouds can move around the planet in horizontal bands known as atmospheric rivers — a key feature of the global cycle that fuels weather systems.

When enough water vapor collects, the droplets suspended in the clouds begin to merge and grow larger. Eventually, they get too heavy and fall to the ground in the form of rain — or snow and hail, depending on the air temperature. This precipitation recharges the rivers, lakes and other bodies of water down below, and the cycle begins again.

Water also percolates through the soil under the influence of gravity and pressure, where it collects in underground reservoirs or aquifers. It continues moving to lower elevations, sometimes for thousands of years, in a process called groundwater flow before eventually seeping into a body of water to rejoin the cycle.

How climate change is disrupting the water cycle

Recent research shows that in some parts of the world, the water cycle is speeding up in response to human-caused climate change. 

Warmer temperatures are heating the lower atmosphere and increasing evaporation, adding more water vapor to the air. More water in the air means a greater chance of precipitation, often in the form of intense, unpredictable storms. Conversely, increased evaporation can also intensify dry conditions in areas prone to drought, with water escaping into the atmosphere rather than staying on the ground where it's needed.

A recent study by researchers at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, illustrated how climate change is accelerating the cycle by analyzing ocean surface salinity, which increases as water evaporation intensifies.

"The acceleration of the water cycle has implications both at the ocean and on the continent, where storms could become increasingly intense," said Estrella Olmedo, the lead author of the study, in a press release. "This higher amount of water circulating in the atmosphere could also explain the increase in rainfall that is being detected in some polar areas, where the fact that it is raining instead of snowing is speeding up the melting."

What can we do to help?

It's become clear that drastic cuts to fossil fuel emissions won't be easy, and any noticeable improvements won't be quick. But some more immediate fixes to stabilize the water cycle are possible.

Restoring wetlands and rethinking agriculture, to incorporate farming techniques that conserve water and preserve and build up the soil, can help to maintain and restore the capacity of the ground to absorb, purify and store water.

'Sponge cities' use permeable surfaces, like this road in the Chinese city of Qian'an, to absorb water

Bringing rivers and waterways back to a more natural state can also help to reverse some of the damage. Projects to remove obsolete dams and weirs in Europe and elsewhere are a major step in the restoration of floodplains, which absorb water and help replenish groundwater reserves.

Cities can also turn to nature-based solutions to support the water cycle, by making urban surfaces more permeable. "Sponge cities" use porous surfaces to allow water to filter through streets, squares and other spaces rather than see it funneled away. This stores water for use during periods of drought, while at the same time helping to combat flooding.

What's at stake?

Cities and regions in the watershed of the Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain ranges in Central Asia may need to start turning to solutions like these in the coming years. Billions of people there rely on the seasonal accumulation of packed snow and ice stored in mountains and glaciers for their fresh water.

But a third of the regions' major ice fields are expected to disappear by the end of this century, according to a 2019 study by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Nepal — and that's if we manage to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

The Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain ranges in Central Asia hold 

the most ice in the world after the poles

Without a consistent flow of meltwater, water scarcity will increase for billions of people. And while groundwater can make up some of the shortfall, that's also projected to decrease in the coming decades due to climate change. Agriculture has already become more difficult in places like the India-administered region of Ladakh, in the Hindu Kush Himalayan range, where scientists have recorded a drop in snowfall and glacier retreat over the last few decades.

"This is the climate crisis you haven't heard of," said Philippus Wester of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. "Impacts on people in the region, already one of the most fragile and hazard-prone mountain regions in the world, will range from an increase in extreme weather events, a reduction in agricultural yields and more frequent disasters."

REWILDING SUCCESS STORIES
Harnessing people power to protect the planet
Rewilding, a social and ecological movement promoting more wilderness, has seen people across the world help restore, protect, heal and stabilize nature. Rewilding efforts have focused on repairing broken ecological systems and enhancing species survival by giving nature space to restore and manage itself. Ecologists in Europe have demanded that 20% of degenerated areas be renaturalized by 2030.
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Edited by: Tamsin Walker

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• Date 10.10.2022