Guardian of the Glaciers

Formed of a living god, Himālaya, supreme
Raja of the Mountains, rises in the north
and bathing in the western and the eastern oceans
stretches out like a rod that could measure the earth.

— Kālidāsa (translated from the Sanskrit by Hank Heifetz)

HUMANS HAVE LIVED in the shadows of the Himalayas for the past 5,000 years, so it is not surprising that the world’s tallest mountain range would figure prominently in the mythology, folklore, and culture of the region. This is especially true in Nepal. Spanning the length of its northern border and forming a barrier that separates the Tibetan Plateau from the alluvial floodplains of the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayas are central to Nepal’s identity. They not only exert an immeasurable spiritual and emotional force on the nearly 30 million people who inhabit this small country, but they also provide the population with water, food, and medicine. Bihan uthne bittikai himal dekhna paaiyos, begins a popular Nepali song: “Let the Himalayas be seen when we wake up,” words reflecting the collective longing, consciousness, and imagination of a nation.

Centuries of migration have brought people from India, Tibet, the Islamic world, and elsewhere, creating an astounding range of cultures in Nepal—123 languages are spoken by people from 126 castes and ethnic groups. This cultural diversity is rivaled only by the area’s biological richness. Get on a bus just about anywhere in Nepal and in a single day you could traverse arctic, alpine, broadleaf forest, grassland, wetland, plain, subtropical, and tropical ecosystems—and still get only a glimpse of the country’s 118 distinct ecological communities. Roughly 900 species of birds and 200 species of mammals, some critically endangered, inhabit these varied ecosystems, including the elephant, tiger, and ever-elusive snow leopard.

But what if Nepal could hold other governments responsible for the environmental damage being wrought within its borders? One activist is working on a plan to do just that.

All of that life, all of that biological diversity, depends on the health of the Himalayas. Which is why a 627-page report published last year by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development—declaring that the Himalayas are the fastest-warming mountain range on Earth—is especially alarming. According to the center’s director, David Molden, climate change has already affected the alpine regions of the Himalayas in a profound way, causing significant glacier loss, avalanches, rockfalls, and melting of the permafrost. In the Himalayan foothills, climate change has led to severe flooding, an increase in vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever, more frequent landslides, unpredictable growing seasons, reduced crop yields, and the loss of many natural springs on which people and animals rely. And although precipitation events have become more variable and extreme, the average amount of monthly rainfall in Nepal has decreased by 3.2 percent, most notably during monsoon season.

Between 1977 and 2010, moreover, Nepal experienced a 29 percent decline in its glacial ice reserve. Currently, glaciers in Nepal are receding at a rate of about 15 square miles a year. With average annual temperatures expected to rise between 1.3 and 1.8 degrees Celsius within three decades (and up to 2.2 degrees in the highest elevations), some scientists predict that between one-third and two-thirds of the nearly 54,000 glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region will be gone by 2100. The loss, given how essential glacial snow is to the mountains, in ways both symbolic and substantive, would be unthinkable. The very word Himālaya is derived from the Sanskrit hima, meaning “snow,” and alaya, “abode.”

Now consider that Nepal contributes a scant 0.0027 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions—neighboring China and India account for 30 percent and seven percent respectively—and the scope of the country’s problems becomes clearer. Nothing this small country can do at present can mitigate the harm done by the rest of the world. But what if Nepal could hold other governments responsible for the environmental damage being wrought within its borders? One activist is working