SOS from the Himalaya: The lifeline to 2b people is snapping in real time

Dispatch from Annapurna Base Camp

The day we reached Annapurna Base Camp (ABC), one of the most tempting tourist destinations in Nepal, the peaks were mostly covered by cloud. The next morning, though, everything was clear. Revelers were finding it hard to fathom the beauty of the snow-capped peaks all around them.

I was, though, constantly haunted by a different scene. On my way up to the camp, I had noticed the huge ravine adjoining the camp itself which seemed to be expanding every year because of active landslides on both of its sides. Now it is about three kilometers long with an estimated width of around 300 meters.

What was so anomalous about this mediocre-looking ravine next to the magnificent Annapurna range of the Himalaya?

Once upon a time it used to be a glacier. Millions of tonnes of snow used to sit atop the gravel that is now exposed even in late October. High pressure and warmer temperatures around the tail end of the glacier made sure that a given amount of ice kept melting throughout the year, feeding the Modi river round-the-clock. The ice so lost would be constantly replenished by the snow that kept sliding from the body of the peaks above and falling at the top.

Once the rise in atmospheric temperature went out of hand—Himalaya has been warming at rates 2-3 times higher than global average—the cycle was disrupted. More ice at the tail end kept melting than could be replaced by falling snow above. The glaciers kept shrinking and many of them, like this one, disappeared altogether.

The snow line receded so much that now we had to move to around 50 meters higher altitude from the ABC just to touch snow in late October. The locals say that around two decades ago, the snow would cover the trekking trail even below the Machhapuchhre Base Camp, at hundreds of meters lower altitude compared to ABC at this time of the year.

As you can see in this image, now the snow-line has moved a good distance above the vertical cliff at the base of the peaks. That means even though the sparkling snow at the summits and bodies of the peaks is still there, the vast reservoir of glacial ice that fed the river system has disappeared entirely. The flatter parts of the Himalaya region are now free of snow cover for most of the year, drastically reducing the total volume of ice cumulatively held by any given area in the region.

This loss of the ice mass has been compounded by the active landslides like this one that are proliferating in the landscape that was once largely stable beneath the mass of snow:

The upshot: the entire river system sustaining nearly two billion people in South Asia—from the Indus river feeding Pakistan to the Ganges and Brahmaputra feeding India, Nepal and Bangladesh—now risks a massive disruption. The underground aquifers that are drying up exponentially in the Gangetic plains because of unsustainable water extraction will be stressed even further as they cannot recharge themselves with water sipping from the rivers.

The IPCC in its latest report has indicated that the relatively sustained flow in our rivers despite massive recession of glaciers so far may prove deceptive: the reduction of flow because of loss of ice mass has been partially compensated by the increased rate of melting caused by higher temperatures. This has set up a vicious cycle which will eventually lead us to the threshold at which the flow of water in the rivers during the dry season drops precipitously.

After that happens, every major form of livelihood—agriculture, hydroelectricity, tourism, industry—in South Asia will be harshly impacted. That is, if many of us survive at all because the dearth of fresh drinking water will have a calamitous impact on our survival itself. The conflicts over ownership of water resources within and across national borders will only compound the problem by displacing an even larger number of people and destabilizing the entire societies and countries.

As I left the camp and started descending, I was burdened by a two-fold realization. First, by the time my two-years-old son starts trekking to ABC, the snow-line will have moved much higher with many more bodies of ice at higher altitudes also gone forever. The threshold I explained above will likely have been crossed with the upheaval across South Asia and the whole world.

What was even more alarming and depressing at the same time, the hundreds of people streaming to ABC everyday—both Nepali and foreigners alike—looked childishly content and indifferent about the potentially catastrophic future unfolding before their very eyes.

Early in the morning, the visitors—most of them facebook and/or tiktok-addicted Nepalis—jostled to capture the most photogenic spot near the edge of the precipice on top of which the Camp resides. Some of them may some day be literally brought down to the floor of the ravine by a landslide.

The most they were worried about were their own fitness, sore knees or sleep lost to high altitude.

Even my partners on the trip were slightly dismayed when we had to leave the beautiful spot and move back to the city but there was no indication that they were mourning the slow death of the Himalaya, the great source of the river systems that sustain 2 billion people on the planet.

Ignorance may be bliss for some time but it is sure to haunt us back with calamitous ferocity somewhere down the line.

One Israeli elder had trekked for about two weeks from Pokhara all the way to ABC along with wife and a young German lady.

Have you watched The Band’s visit? I asked. He strained to recollect and said: the funny movie about the Egyptian band? He was spot on.

Have you read the (Yuval Noah) Harari trilogy? I followed up.

No. In fact I borrowed the first book from the library but could not finish it.

He seemed to have lost interest in the book after reading a couple of pages. I gently reprimanded him for failing to finish reading such a lucid book in his and the author’s native tongue and tried to coax him into reading the trilogy after he was back in Israel.

But most likely he will never finish even Sapiens, let alone the trilogy.

It is indeed easy to hide your head in the sand and pretend everything around you is OK.

Until it is not.

The day the droughts, heat waves, the landslides, floods, hurricanes and wildfires engulf the lives of our nears and dears and threaten our own survival, the day the conflicts and mass dislocation of populations roil the entire society and continent, it will not be tranquil or funny any more.

Then we are sure to look back and regret: if only we had heeded the warnings from the likes of Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Yuval Noah Harari, Greta Thunberg, Berta Cáceres, David Suzuki and Bill McGuire in time.

ICYMT

In the Morning, Bill McKibben Said I'll Become an Emergency Rescuer in 30 years. By Evening, I Became One.