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WWFによると温暖化によりヒマラヤの氷河が急速に後退し始め、中国、インド、ネパールのような氷河を水源とする河川域に住む人の水不足が懸念される。
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2A0BC4C7-DB12-4493-999B-27E55464792D.htm
Climate change imperils Asian rivers
Sunday 13 March 2005, 19:37 Makka Time, 16:37 GMT
*Global warming is causing Himalayan glaciers to rapidly retreat, threatening to cause water shortages for hundreds of millions of people who rely on glacier-dependent rivers in China, India and Nepal, according to the WWF.
The warning by the global conservation group on Monday comes as WWF releases a new report which it said exposes the rate of retreat of Himalayan glaciers accelerating as global warming increases.
The report indicates glaciers in the region - which represent the greatest concentration of ice on the planet after the Arctic poles - are now receding at an average rate of 10 to 15 metres per year.
"The rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers will first increase the volume of water in rivers, causing widespread flooding," Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature's Global Climate Change Programme, said in a statement.
She added: "But in a few decades this situation will change and the water level in rivers will decline, meaning massive economic and environmental problems for people in western China, Nepal and northern India."
*Climate change
Himalayan glaciers feed into seven of Asia's greatest rivers - the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers - ensuring a year-round water supply to hundreds of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent and China.
The WWF report was published in the run-up to two meetings in London on climate change organised by Britain as current head of the G8 group of industrialised nations.
The gatherings, a ministerial roundtable of the 20 largest energy using economies in the world, and then a G8 meeting of development and environment ministers focusing on climate change, take place from 15-18 March.
In a letter sent to participating ministers, WWF stressed the need to recognise climate change as an issue that seriously threatens security and development.
"Ministers should realise now that the world faces an economic and development catastrophe if the rate of global warming isn't reduced," Morgan said.
*Study details
A study commissioned by WWF shows that dangerous levels of climate change could be reached in just over 20 years and that if nothing is done, the earth will have warmed by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by some time between 2026 and 2060.
"All countries must understand that crossing the two degree Celsius ceiling is truly dangerous," Morgan said.
As glacier water flows dwindle, the energy potential of hydroelectric power will decrease, causing problems for industry, as well as agriculture, as reduced irrigation means lower crop yields, WWF said.
The environmental watchdog's report shows that three of Nepal's snow-fed rivers have shown declining discharge. Nepal has an annual average temperature rise of 0.06 degree Celsius per year.
In northwest China, the Qinghai Plateau's wetlands have seen declining lake water levels, lake shrinkage, an absence of water flow in rivers and streams, and a degradation of swamp wetlands, according to the report.
India's Gangotri glacier, which supports one of India's largest river basins, is likewise receding at an average rate of 23 metres per year.
AFP
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C475164A-0CB0-43EF-837B-6427A8591069.htm
Global warming bad for industry
Wednesday 16 March 2005, 0:26 Makka Time, 21:26 GMT
*Britain has told the world's biggest polluters that only by placing the environment at the heart of economic policy can they prevent a crisis caused by global warming.
London hosted a two-day brainstorming on climate change by ministers and senior officials from 20 countries in the run-up to a July meeting of the eight most industrialised nations - the G8 group - currently led by London.
The need for action to avert a looming climate catastrophe was rammed home by graphic images of melting glaciers and makeshift sea defences displayed at the venue of the meeting.
"We must make climate stability, energy investment and energy security central to economic policies," British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown told the meeting. "International cooperation is again the only way forward."
Brown said he would study the costs and feasibility of carbon sequestration - the capture and burial deep underground of millions of tonnes of the carbon dioxide emitted by fossil fuel burning power stations.
*Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases came into force in February but is still shunned by the world's biggest emitter, the United States, and puts scant limits on China as it rises fast up the pollution ranks.
Senior officials from both countries attended the London meeting, aiming to discuss ways to achieve the environmental goal of sustainable low carbon economies.
The US delegate made it clear energy efficiency, not a radical shift to a low carbon economy, should be the key.
"We are now trying to find a portfolio in which three words are important, technology, technology, technology," US President George Bush's chief environment adviser James Connaughton said before the meeting.
*Protest
As about 30 people banged pots and pans in the street outside to protest against what they said was rich nation hypocrisy, speakers stressed the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency and switch to renewable resources.
And that did not just mean wind and wave power. Nuclear power - anathema to the green lobby - had to remain an option.
"We will keep the nuclear option open," British Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt said, noting that while it was a low carbon technology there were major questions over its true costs and the problem of nuclear waste storage.
*Going nuclear
Liu Jiang, leading the Chinese delegation, went even further, stressing that nuclear power was clean and saying that China was embarking on a major investment programme in nuclear reactors to reduce its massive dependence on burning coal.
He also urged the rich, developed world which owns most of the cutting edge green technology to make it more readily and cheaply available to developing countries as they try to climb the steep slope out of poverty.
Jacques Dubois, chairman of the giant SwissRe reinsurance company that underwrites insurers' risks, said his experts considered the risks to people and property from climate change to be a major problem for the future.
The London meeting is part of Britain's agenda for the G8, which Prime Minister Tony Blair has vowed will make progress on climate change and African development.
The two sensitive issues will come together at the G8 summit near the Scottish town of Gleneagles in July.
Reuters
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