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Policy Briefs Govt Issues Glacier Report
Policy Briefs Govt Issues Glacier Report
Policy Brief
| Govt issues Glacier report |
 All is not well but govt thinks otherwise ...November 2009 Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, released a report on Indian Himalayan glaciers in early November 2009. The report reviews glacial studies and glacial retreat in India, and has been prepared at the Minister's request by Mr V.K. Rains, ex-Deputy Director General of the Geological Survey of India (GSI). Regrettably, a report that was supposed to “encourage informed science-based discussion and debate on critical environmental issues” is replete with biased and unscientific statements. The report has been roundly criticised by Indian and foreign experts and accused of being politically motivated. To add to the wide discrediting of the report, its untimely release came just after India met with other SAARC countries (including three other Himalayan nations) where India joined other South Asian nations in pledging to take action on climate change. Furthermore it came in the wake of the meeting of Himalayan Chief Ministers in Simla to discuss a roadmap for development in a climate constrained world. The report has come under fire from scientists studying the issue who say it has completely missed out peer-reviewed scientific literature post-1980 – the period after which climate change became recognised as a serious issue. A baffling omission. For instance, the report makes no mention of measurements that show glacial retreat in 466 glaciers in the Chenab region3, or of an eight percent glacier area loss in Bhutan between 1963 and 1993 (Karma et al. 2003 in WGMS 2008), or an annual ice thickness loss of 0.8 m.w.e between 1994 and 2004 in Himachal Pradesh (Berthier et al. 2007 in WGMS 2008). This and the omission of reference of key scientific literature including other Geological Survey of India (GSI) studies (Vohra, 1981 on Satluj River Basin glaciers, and Shukla and Siddiqui, 1999, on the Milam glacier), and reports based on studies conducted by ICIMOD based on long-term monitoring studies in the Nepal and Bhutan Himalayas, raise questions as to whether there is a political agenda behind releasing the report at this time. Claim to fame The report challenges internationally-accepted views that the Himalayan glaciers are receding due to climate change. Its concluding remarks suggest “glaciers in the Himalayas, although shrinking in volume and constantly showing a retreating front, have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat…”. Apart from the fact that this statement itself speaks of "recent years" while talking about climate change, such statements openly challenge the understanding that global warming is contributing to the large-scale retreat of glaciers around the world. Glacier changes are recognized as high-confidence climate indicators, and considered as evidence for climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Reports from the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) indicate that measurements taken over the last century “clearly reveal a general shrinkage of mountain glaciers on a global scale” (WGMS report). Despite this, this government report suggests that “to postulate that a glacier can warn of climate changes likely to take place in the future is a big question mark” – obviously refuting global scientific consensus that glaciers are indeed indicators of climate change. The MoEF/ Raina report argues that “none of the glaciers under monitoring are recording abnormal retreat”. It also indicates that the Kangriz glacier has “practically not retreated even an inch”. These superbly unsubstantiated claims of “not even an inch”, “abnormal retreat”, “hardly any retreat” and “slowed down considerably” seriously undermine the scientific credibility of the report. The use of ambiguous language however, is the smaller of the issues. The report fails to mention international peer-reviewed scientific literature from studies within or outside of India (rest of Himalayas and Hindu Kush mountain regions) – one look at the meager list of references will indicate that. And yet, in direct contrast to statements aimed to generate disbelief in glacier retreat are data and photographs of these glaciers in the report itself. Below is an image of the Kangriz glacier (image also from report), which the report claims retreated ‘not even by an inch’. Where is the ice in the image on the right hand side? The report awaits ‘many centuries’ of data to conclude that glacier snout movements are a result of ‘periodic climate variation’ or to make a statement that glaciers in the Himalayas are ‘retreating abnormally because of global warming’. While we in turn, wait for these "many centuries of data", the Indian Himalaya will be the only portion of the great Himalayan mountain range (and indeed of glaciers around the world) to be immune to the effects of climate change. Or so we are led to believe. End Notes:
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