By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : By the year 2050, the world’s glaciers may have disappeared, changing the face of the earth and endangering the mountains in northern Nepal that was the beloved land of Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary.
To goad the world into action to save the mountains, the Sherpa people who live in the lap of the mountains and a quarter of the world population who depend on the Himalayan ranges for their drinking water supply, Nepal’s first Hillary memorial expedition is heading for Mt. Everest in April.
Supported by the International Care for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the UN Environment Programme, the eight-member Eco-Everest Expedition 2008 comprises Belgians, Spaniards and Nepalis, including Dawa Steven Sherpa, whose father Ang Tsering Sherpa was one of the first students to enrol in the school Sir Edmund Hillary founded in Khumjung village in north Nepal in the 1960s.
Accompanying the expedition is Japanese conservationist Ken Noguchi and US climber Conrad Anker, credited with finding lost climber George Mallory’s body.
The expedition will set up a trust fund for the development of the community in the Khumbu region and to finance further research and monitoring of especially endangered glacial lakes.
Dawa, 24, who climbed Mt. Everest last year, describes the disaster that is taking place at the roof of the world.
“After climbing Mt. Everest last May, I tried to go up again,” he said. “To my shock, I found the ice was no longer solid. It was melting into slush. The Sherpas warned me against going up.
“Go up if you want to die, they told me. I listened to them and turned back and within minutes, the ice field where I had stood had collapsed.”
Like him, Dawa says, the Sherpa community who live in the lap of the mountains are blissfully unaware that the consequences of global warming could hit them directly any day.
ICIMOD expert Pradeep Mool says there are about 200 glacial lakes in the mountains between Pakistan and Bhutan, which could burst any day, causing a ferocious avalanche of boulders and rocks that will level out trees, buildings and villages.
About 20 potentially dangerous lakes are in Nepal alone, most of them concentrated in the Dudh-Koshi basin.
Dawa plans to draw the world’s attention to the peril lurking in the mountains and create a fund that will set an early disaster warning system in the Khumbu region, the gateway to the Himalayan ranges.
It will also attempt to encourage sustainable development, focussing on recycling, and remove part of the accumulating garbage on the mountaintops.
Dawa guesstimates that there is a minimum of 5 to 10 tonnes of garbage on the slopes, mostly gas and oxygen cylinders and tin cans.
He is also hoping to formulate a 10-point code of conduct – to be drawn up with the advice of eminent mountaineers – to be followed by future expeditions so that instead of making profit a priority, ethics and the benefits of the community are also considered.
However, the expedition will not attempt to remove the bodies of dead climbers.
The announcement of the expedition comes after Nepal’s government named Lukla Airport in north Nepal the Tenzing-Hillary airport to honour the dead Everest heroes and a section of the route to the Everest base camp after them.