UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged the world to “end the madness” of climate change as he visited parts of the Himalayas to witness the phenomenon’s devastating impact on rapid melting. glaciers.
“The roofs of the world are collapsing,” Guterres said during a trip to Nepal’s Everest mountain region, noting that the country had lost nearly a third of its ice in just over a year. of three decades.
“Glaciers are reservoirs of ice: those of the Himalayas provide fresh water to more than a billion people,” he stressed. “When they decrease, the flow of rivers also decreases. »
Nepal’s glaciers have melted 65% faster in the past decade than in the previous decade, said Antonio Guterres, who is on a four-day visit to the country.
In the vast Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges, glaciers provide a crucial source of water for an estimated 240 million people in mountainous regions, as well as another 1.65 billion people in river valleys from South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Glaciers feed 10 of the world’s most important river systems, including the Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Mekong and Irrawaddy, and directly or indirectly provide billions of people with food, energy, clean air and income.
Scientists say they are melting faster than before due to climate change, exposing local communities to unpredictable and costly disasters.
“I am here today to shout from the roof of the world: stop this madness,” said Antonio Guterres, speaking from the village of Syangboche, with the icy summit of Everest, the highest in the world, behind him. .
” Disaster “
“The glaciers are retreating, but we can’t. We must end the era of fossil fuels,” he said.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world is on track to cross the critical warming threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by the early 2030s.
Global warming has caused a cascade of extreme weather consequences, including more intense heat waves, more severe droughts and storms that have become more violent with rising seas.
Hardest hit are the world’s most vulnerable people and poorest countries, which have contributed little to the fossil fuel emissions that fuel global warming.
“We must act now to protect those on the front lines and to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, to avoid the worst of climate chaos,” the UN chief said. “The world cannot wait. »
The melting of glaciers can trigger destructive floods of “lakes and rivers, washing away entire communities,” added the Portuguese.
But if nothing changes, the glaciers will soon dry up, he warned. “In the future, major rivers” like the “Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra” that originate high in the Himalayas “could have significantly reduced flow rates,” he said.
“This would mean a catastrophe,” said the head of the United Nations.