Mountains like Everest are the water towers of life as we know it in ASEAN and abroad
But when the water body is leaving the continent the foundation of life is depleted
For eight million years, the Himalayas have trapped and diverted precipitation to the south and east of the Tibetan Plateau, preventing moisture from reaching what are now the Mongolian and Gobi deserts.
Water is a vital component of life, Mount?Everest are the water tower of South east Asia, and an increasing number of people rely on the freshwater provided by the watershed.
It is therefore essential to protect the health of freshwater sources like this one and ensure that all populations supplied from the river systems of the region maintain access to clean water.
Mount Everest is the highest point in the world, with a summit of 8,849 meters (29,032 feet) above sea level. It is part of the Himalaya, which spans 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) across the countries of India, China, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Mountains like these are known as the water towers of the world, because they provide half of the world’s population with freshwater. Ten major rivers originate in the Himalaya and supply freshwater to 1.5 billion people living in its watershed.
For many people all over the world, life revolves around water and the support it gives. People need clean freshwater for drinking, cleaning, irrigation of crops, industrial activity, and even supplying energy. The following stories focus on four different groups of people who live in the Mount Everest watershed, and for whom water is a central focus of daily life.
The rapid melting we experience of Himalayan glaciers and the consequent effects will disrupt the lives of nearly 13% of the global population or 1 billion people all over South Asia.
While the melting glaciers is increasing the water level of rivers in the shorter term, in long term it will lead to acute water scarcity in the South Asian nations.
Countries like India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Pakistan stand to face a severity of threats on water security issues. It is estimated that the water level in the Himalaya-Karakoram rivers will increase till 2050 and thereafter, the rivers will start running dry.
- The climate of the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan Plateau is influenced by the Himalayas. - They block cold, dry winds from blowing south into the subcontinent, keeping South Asia significantly warmer than temperate regions on other continents.
When more and more ice melst, the water level of the rivers originating from the Himalaya-Karakoram mountains will increase initially, but in the long run, during long summer seasons, the water will dry up, a problem we already is experiencing with the recurring and severe droughts
This severity is multiplied by carbon gasses. If air pollution goes on unabated, there will be no ice glaciers left, the groundwater will dry up, and there will be long periods of no rainfall, leaving the rivers devoid of any water source.
The extreme warming of the Himalaya-Karakoram mountains will also affect farming and other livelihoods while simultaneously increasing the risk of floods.
The rapid melting of glaciers and the consequent effects will disrupt the lives of nearly 13 percent of the global population or approx. 1 billion people in South Asia.
The residents of megacities like Delhi, Lahore, Karachi, Kolkata and Dhaka will face the brunt of fast-melting glaciers due to greenhouse gas emissions.
The Eastern Himalayas have the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar region, and hold vast stores of fresh water. Continued climate change is predicted to lead to major changes in freshwater flows, with dramatic impacts on biodiversity, people and their livelihoods.
The Himalayas play a very important role in influencing the climate of India. India is a monsoon land only because of the presence of Himalayas. It traps the monsoon winds from Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal and forces them to shed their moisture content within the Indian sub-continent in the form of snow and rain.
The water they accumulate during the winter enables the growth of crops and plants downstream in the summer. However, global warming is contributing to a rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Between 1970 and 2000, 9% of their ice volume was lost
Climate change has strong influence on the precipitation over Himalayas as well as melting response of glaciers/ snow cover in Himalayas. This in turn affects the runoff pattern of rivers draining from the glaciated catchments of Himalayas.
Increasing temperature due to climate change will melt the Himalayan glaciers that are the major sources of water for rivers of the region. This is likely to increase the level of waters in rivers and lead to threats of floods in major cities.
South Asia is the region in Asia located south of the Himalayan Mountains and east of the Caspian Sea. India is the largest country in the South Asia region and experiences several climate regions:
Average temperatures in Southeast Asia has risen in every decade since 1960. Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand are among 10 countries in the world most affected by climate change in the past 20 years
Land clearing for agriculture is the main cause of deforestation. Driven by booming global demand, oil palm plantations have spread into formerly forested land, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, which are the world's largest producers. Logging, much of it illegal, is also a serious threat to the region's forests.
Climate change is already affecting life in Asia. E.g., rising temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events have caused crop yields to decline in many Asian countries. Permafrost and glaciers are both retreating in an unprecedented fashion.
As a result, Southeast Asia has lost more than half of its original forest cover, causing what some experts argue to be one of the most severe biodiversity loss crises. It is expected than more than 40% of the region's biodiversity will be extinct - or completely disappear - by 2100, should the current deforestation activity continue.
Cambodia is one of the world's most forest endowed countries, that was not historically widely deforested. However, massive deforestation for economic development threatens its forests and ecosystems. As from 2015, the country has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
Deforestation and forest degradation in Malaysia is a complex phenomenon with varying causes. So far, however, the focus has been largely on direct causes like industrial logging, large-scale commercial oil palm plantations and agribusiness, road construction and large dams.
Deforestation is a pressing problem in the region with Indonesia contributing to the largest proportion of forests being cleared, followed by other hotspots such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
The Himalayas and monsoons are two major factors that affect the climate regions of South Asia.
The main factors that affect the climate of Asia are :
South East Asia has sea levels rising faster than any other part of the world and bears the brunt of many climate hazards. That's in part because the region is home to a significant number of low-lying countries with lower levels of per capita GDP, such as Cambodia and Myanmar.
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Climate change is likely to further intensify severe weather events, with significant human and financial costs for ASEAN member states. Moreover, most of their populations are concentrated along the seaboards and on flat fertile plains threatened by sea level rise.
The climate change risk premium is the highest for Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. The effect of resilience to risks from climate change has a substantially lower effect on bond yields across all ASEAN economies.
In the absence of forest cover and with frequent heavy typhoon rains, soil erosion, mass wasting, and landslides are induced. The Philippines is facing water insecurity because of degraded and poorly managed watersheds.
Floods, loss of biodiversity and sea level rise are the top three perceived climate change impacts in ASEAN. These climate change impacts is also picked as top three concerns.
Inequalities underlie many water-related challenges. Addressing them requires both participatory dialogue and a common action framework to ease the problems through a coordinated regional strategy.
Population growth, rapid urbanisation and climate change are drivers of water shortage, pollution and flooding in Southeast Asia.
There are several ways to raise the profile of water-security activities as a countermeasure to these disaster-related challenges and enable long term resilience-building to the strategy.
One step is to advocate for the closer alignment of ASEAN efforts for reducing water scarcity and managing drought risk. Droughts are an ever-present threat in the region that affected?more than 70% of the region’s land in the past five years - and burdened the poor the most- The severity of droughts is at a record high, and it is likely to be more severe because of?the global warming.
Droughts are complex, slow-onset disasters with indirect effects that develop gradually and accumulate over time – making them harder to keep in mind, track and address. They trigger water insecurity and other cascading effects?that increases vulnerability, such as decreased food production, loss of livelihoods, forced migration and regional instability.
Despite awareness?of these trends and the urgency of addressing climate risks, the regional disaster management of droughts is lagging compared to other water-related hazards. For instance, there has yet not been a single ASEAN?joint response?to alleviate drought impacts.
However, the recently completed?standardised analysis?of droughts across member states can help improve regional policies for a new climate reality. It presents an opportunity to leverage the expertise and lessons learned by the ASEAN?Working Group?on Water Resources Management since 2005.
Incorporating water shortage and stress solutions and contingency plans into disaster-risk assessments, early warning systems, response mechanisms, needs assessments and risk financing can help ASEAN make tangible progress towards more proactive and adaptive drought-risk management.
In an even larger perspective, the crisis will open up opportunities for other crops that can be developed that are not even part of the food system we know today.
Probably the most important obstacle to immediately increase crop production here and now is the increasingly severe shortage of water. Huge areas of the world are cultivated with really low yields or simply cannot be cultivated at all due to lack of fresh water.
The hard question is: How can we ensure the agricultural development are able to meet the demand to supply plentiful food to an exponentially growing world population?
There is no simple answers to this question. It is though crucial to target the development of agricultural production at all levels, both around local and global issues.
Work must be done developing the crops, on the cultivation systems and on the technological measures that can enable to increase the production and utilization of what is produced, and combined with training and advice for agriculture and streamlining of processing, distribution and consumption of food.
Family farms that produce 80% of the world's food, and?are vital to the solution to the world's hunger problem, which is currently threatening almost a billion people.
When family farms comprise almost 8/10 of all agricultural resources in the world, they are imperative to improved ecological sustainability, supply security and nature restoration.
Small farms produces a higher share of the world's food relative to the share of land they use, as they have higher yields than larger local farms within the same agro-ecological settings.
Currently, as farm sizes are becoming smaller, many smallholder farm households derive the bulk of their income from off-farm activities.
To encourage family farmers to invest in sustainable agricultural practices authorities should seek to facilitate an enabling environment for innovation.
It is necessary to increase production per. workers, especially in low-income countries, to lift agricultural incomes and support a general expansion of rural economic welfare to prevent production losses when families eg. give up cultivating their shrinking lands due to declining incomes.
What can we do to accelerate generation of fertile soil and agricultural practices that promote species richness without spoiling the resilience of the natural environment?
It is imperative to increase production per. workers, especially in low-income countries, to lift agricultural incomes and support a general expansion of rural economic welfare to prevent production losses when families eg. give up cultivating their shrinking lands due to declining incomes.
Time is up for agricultural policies and subsidy schemes that support and reward farmers who use regenerative methods, improve soil's fertility and uphold species richness globally.
To encourage family farmers to invest in sustainable agricultural practices authorities should seek to facilitate an enabling environment for innovation and start set things right again.
Adapting the agricultural methods globally to the variety of different environments, as balancing yields with the conservation of biotopes is a precedence to succeed in breaking vicious circles aggravating climate problems and put nature's autopilot back in action.
To achieve this, we must reinterpret the purpose of primary production, the dominant agricultural policies and subsidy schemes. It makes absolutely no sense to continue to create an incentive for agricultural practices that degrade the soil's fertility and reduce species richness globally.
Rather, there is a need for incentive schemes that support and reward farmers who use regenerative methods, this has the greatest effect.?
The need is for solutions that are actually possible to implement.?
There is a great potential in regenerating natural processes where great efforts are already being made to influence soil quality and yield.
A development that reduces the damage from monoculture crops and reduces carbon emissions to the atmosphere is an obvious place to make a stronger effort.