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31
IMPACT Article: The Ganga, Shangri-La, K’un L’un and the Tale the Lost Glaciers
March 31, 2009 | Posted by admin
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The Ganga, Shangri-La, K’un L’un and the Tale the Lost Glaciers
By Eric J. Fitch
More than a 100 million years ago, the Indian subcontinent broke free from Africa during the larger breakup of Gondwanaland. Plate tectonics drove it northward at an estimated astonishing rate of 150 mm per year. Around 55 million years ago, one of the great geologic “train wrecks” of all time began and continues through today; the Indian subcontinent slammed into south Asia eventually causing upthrust that created great mountain ranges and the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau (Tibetan Plateau or Tibet for short). In the current era, these lands and their peoples have become the stuff of legend largely due to the lands stark beauty and remoteness. In 1933 novelist James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon” was published and four years later legendary director Frank Capra turned it into a movie. Dreams of this remote, idyllic land of Shangri-La where peace and harmony reigned untouched by the “sins” of war, greed, and ravages to the land were popular in America in those days as the Great Depression still reigned at home and the drums of war were playing in both Europe and Asia. Fascination and fantasy have been inspired by the remote peaks of the Himalayas, the K’un L’un, the Qilian, and the environs surrounding and within the Tibetan Plateau have fascinated storytellers and their audiences from the dawn of human history. From the Vedic stories of the origin of Ganga (the Ganges), to stories of the Yeti, to modern references to the home of the Ancient One and the other dimensional city of K’un L’un in the Dr. Strange and Iron Fist comic books, respectively. If remote, mysterious, challenging and mystical is what you want in a location, these kingdoms of the sky fit the bill nicely.
Even after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers acknowledged to have ascended Mt. Everest successfully, these regions still retained their pull on humankind’s imagination. Unfortunately, these regions have not escaped the impacts of “modern civilization” including war, conquest, and degradation of the environment. Along with issues of transboundary atmospheric pollution, there are also issues of climate change and water resources. Recent studies indicate that Himalayan glaciers, like glaciers worldwide, are retreating at an astonishing rate. If global warming continues apace or increases, these glaciers will be 80% gone in as little as 30 and probably no more than 50 years; and perhaps completely gone at the dawn of the 22nd Century. These glaciers are the source water for the main rivers of Asia and 40% of the world’s population: the Ganga, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Mekong, and many others rise from the south-central Asian interior and flow to the sea. Many are already over used and polluted by the time they reach the sea. Some like the Ganga and the Mekong are highly vulnerable to another effect of climate change, salinization driven by sea level rise and inland overuse.
In the water community in the United States and internationally, much the discussion of climate change impacts has focused on prolonged drought and precipitation shortfalls. Recent studies by the United Nations Environmental Programme, the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, and scientific agencies and individual researchers throughout the world on the acceleration of glacial loss, not just in the Arctic and Antarctic, but also in the “third pole” of mountain range glaciers, have brought into focus another and in certain regions even more important threat to water supplies. Although the impending loss of these water sources and watercourses in Asia in terms of impact on sheer numbers of human beings cannot be equaled in any single region elsewhere, from the Alps to the Andes, from the Mountains of the Moon (source of the Nile) to the Rockies and Cascades, no continent is free from glacial disintegration and its results. Some areas in the interim years might actually experience increased annual water supply and even flooding. In the longer term, however, even these regions will be dealing with drying and loss of water supplies. Shangri-La is a wonderful, utopian myth; a nice dream. In reality, in Asia and throughout the world, climate adaptation strategies will have to include the loss of glacial melt as a source of freshwater in vast regions and for billions of people many of which are already dealing with water scarcity.
Editor’s Note: Additional articles may be found in AWRA’s bi-monthly magazine IMPACT.
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