By AFP - Agence France Presse
Save the world's glaciers to save the planet: UN
By AFP/Agnès PEDRERO
Saving the world's shrinking glaciers is a “survival strategy” for the planet, the UN said on Tuesday, a day after President Donald Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
United Nations agencies have launched an appeal to increase efforts to rescue the world's 275,000 glaciers, which are melting rapidly as the planet warms.
UNESCO, the UN's educational, scientific, and cultural agency, and the meteorology, climate, and water agency of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) highlighted the essential role that these giant masses of ice play, providing fresh water for more than two billion people around the world.
“The preservation of glaciers is essential for our ecosystems, our economies, and our planetary health,” said WMO deputy chief Ko Barrett, as the agencies launched the International Year of Glacier Preservation.
“Urgent and sustainable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are vital,” she told the gathering in Geneva.
“But unfortunately, we are heading in the wrong direction as levels of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases continue to rise.”
Currently, the world's glaciers cover approximately 700,000 square kilometers (270,000 square miles).
Glaciers and ice sheets play a crucial role in regulating the global climate and store approximately 70% of the world's freshwater, which is essential for billions of people, the agencies said.
'Survival strategy'
“So preserving our glaciers is not just an environmental issue,” said Barrett.
“It's a survival strategy for both people and the planet.”
But from the Alps to the Himalayas, these resources are melting at an increasing rate under the effect of man-made climate change, triggered essentially by greenhouse gas emissions.
Tuesday's launch came after Trump announced he was withdrawing the United States - the world's second-largest emitter after China - from the Paris Agreement.
Critics warn that the move undermines global cooperation on reducing the use of fossil fuels and could encourage big polluters such as China and India to weaken their commitments.
Global average temperatures have already reached record highs in 2024 and in the last two years have temporarily exceeded the critical warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time.
In 2023, glaciers suffered their greatest volume loss in five decades, according to the WMO.
“Counterfactual industries and regimes around the world would deny” climate change, said John Pomeroy, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, at Tuesday's event.
But they “cannot deny their culpability in the destruction of glaciers that is occurring before our eyes,” he said.
'Dramatic'
“The glaciers don't care if we believe the science. They simply melt with the heat.”
Pomeroy warned that “restoring the glaciers will take decades”.
This would require “urgent policy changes” and “expanded measurements” to quickly detect changes and provide early warnings of droughts and floods.
Stefan Uhlenbrook, head of the WMO's hydrology, water, and cryosphere unit, described the situation as “really dramatic”.
Fifty UNESCO World Heritage Sites are home to glaciers.
But the agency warned that ice masses are expected to disappear from a third of these sites by 2050, regardless of efforts to limit the temperature rise.
UNESCO estimates that the rest can still be saved, but only if long-term average global temperatures do not rise by more than 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels.
apo/nl/rjm/bc
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