Glacier experts from India, China, Bhutan and Nepal, along with residents of the Langtang region in Nepal, on Monday paid their tribute to Yala glacier, one of the most studied glaciers in the Himalayas, which is now on its deathbed.
Yala glacier, situated at an altitude of 16,700ft in Nepal, has shrunk by 66 per cent and retreated by 784m since it was first measured in the 1970s.
It is projected to be one of the first glaciers from the eastern Himalayas to be declared “dead” worldwide, said a media release by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
The ICIMOD is an intergovernmental organisation with eight member countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. The body was formed in 1983.
The ICIMOD led the tribute to Yala, which is about 160km north of Kathmandu.
“Over 50 people, including Buddhist monks and members of local community, and glacier experts from Bhutan, China, India, and Nepal completed the arduous high-altitude trek to attend the tribute event on Monday, which featured a Buddhist ceremony, speeches, and the unveiling of two granite memorial plaques which will sit at the foot of where the glacier today stands,” said an ICIMOD official.
Over 100 people, including Afghans, Chinese, Indians, Nepalis and Pakistanis, trained as glaciologists at Yala, which also served as a research site for 50 years.
This is largely because of its relative proximity to Kathmandu compared to other glacier areas in the region.
The stones left at the base of the glacier carry messages from two famous authors, Manjushree Thapa from Nepal and Andri Snaer Magnason from Iceland. The messages were written in English, Nepali and locally spoken Tibetan.
Yala is the first glacier in Asia and the third glacier in the world to carry the messages by Magnason.
Plaques bearing his message also sit at the site of the world’s first “glacier funeral”, which took place in Magnason’s native Iceland in 2019, for OK Glacier, and at the site of the funeral for Ayoloco glacier in Mexico in 2021.
Funerals were also held for the Pizol glacier in the Swiss Alps in 2019, the Clark glacier in Oregon, US, in 2020, and the Basodino glacier in Switzerland in 2021.
In 2021, the ICIMOD, along with the United Nations, marked the disappearance of the Lemthang glacier in Bhutan, which was wiped out by a glacial lake outburst flood in 2017.
ICIMOD officials, however, told The Telegraph from Kathmandu that the tribute to Yala should not be described as a “funeral”.
“The term is culturally insensitive for the region. Moreover, unlike other glaciers that have been removed from the list of glaciers in their respective countries, Yala is still a glacier even though it has lost most of its ice cover,” said an ICIMOD official.
Earth’s mountains have lost close to nine trillion tonnes of ice since records began in 1975 — the equivalent of a 2.72-metre thick block of ice the size of India. At current melting rates, many glaciers worldwide will not survive the 21st century, experts said.
“Yala’s accelerating disappearance is totemic of the disastrous deglaciation and loss of snowpack we’re now seeing unfold on mountains at a pace that outstrips scientists’ worst-case scenarios,” said Pema Gyamtsho, director-general, ICIMOD.
Shyam Saran, a former foreign secretary of India, said: “While this thawing is currently upping the water available for Asia’s major economies and huge urban centres, we know this water is set to decline from mid-century — just 25 years from now.”
Saran was a chief negotiator on climate change for India from 2007 to 2010 and is a strong voice on climate issues.