Mountain communities, climbers and scientists from Everest call for world to decarbonise now

KATHMANDU, Nepal  - Today, 70 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled Mount Everest, the Earth’s tallest mountain is undergoing unprecedented and largely irreversible change caused by global warming.  

Global temperature rises are jeopardising Everest and the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, which extends 3,500km across eight countries. In the next 70 years, under the current emissions scenario, scientists project that two-thirds of glaciers in the region will disappear. 

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), supported by mountain institutes globally, including the Nepal Mountaineering Association and the Mountain Partnership (the United Nations voluntary alliance of partners) is calling on members of the public to back the #SaveOurSnow campaign. The campaign asks the public to:

• share stories and photographs from the mountains around the world, highlighting climate impacts using the hashtag #SaveOurSnow
• sign a declaration calling for governments to make good on their commitments to limit warming to 1.5 degrees at www.icimod.org/saveoursnow/declaration

The 79 glaciers that surround Everest have thinned by over 100 metres in just six decades, and the rate of thinning has nearly doubled since 2009. Among those is the iconic Khumbu glacier, the starting place for most expeditions, including Hillary and Tenzing’s all those decades ago, which scientists say is just degrees away from vanishing.  

The HKH region is seeing an increase in adverse impacts from climate change, which will only increase in intensity and frequency. Pema Gyamtsho, ICIMOD Director General, said: “The dangerous impacts of global warming are already being felt throughout the Hindu Kush Himalaya in record-breaking heat waves, droughts, natural disasters, unpredictable snowfall, and precipitous and largely irreversible glacial melt. We need urgent global action to protect the lives and livelihoods of the two billion people in this region and to safeguard the countless, irreplaceable lifeforms that exist only here.”

The HKH is home to more than 240 million people, and nearly a quarter of the world’s population depends on the water that flows from its mountains. The fight against climate change is therefore critically important and requires urgent global action.

Kilian Jornet, a world-leading endurance athlete and ski mountaineer, said: “Everest is changing, fast. Over the years I have witnessed with my own eyes how the mountains are being affected by climate change and at unprecedented speed. The melting of glaciers is making mountains more dangerous for climbers, and more importantly, it’s jeopardising the lives of the billions of people depending on its resources.”

1,000 people signed ICIMOD’s Save Our Snow declaration in the first 48 hours of its launch. The declaration calls on Governments to honour their commitments under the Paris Agreement, make rapid and deep emission cuts, end all new coal, oil and gas exploration, and accelerate the transition to renewable energy. 

Signatories include Rt Hon Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Renate Christ, former Chair of the International Panel for Climate Change, legendary climbers Reinhold Messner and Sir Chris Bonington, descendants of Norgay and Hillary, Samuel Sidiqi, the first Afghan to summit Everest, Naila Kiani, the first Pakistani woman to summit six 8,000+meter mountains and Jornet, and hundreds of earth scientists from the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.

The Save Our Snow campaign comes at the start of the United Nations ‘Five Years of Action for the Development of Mountain Regions’, which was declared in a resolution co-sponsored by 110 Governments and in recognition of the importance of protecting mountain people and environments from climate change and other ongoing global challenges. 

 More information on the #SaveOurSnow campaign and declaration can be found on ICIMOD’s website: www.icimod.org/saveoursnow.