First ever IPCC event in Nepal

Lalitpur, Apr. 11:

A three-day special regional outreach event of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) kicked off here on Tuesday.

The United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change will present its findings with a focus on South Asia at the conference.

The IPCC said that the primary objective of the event was to foster cooperation among the participating countries by raising awareness about climate change and to enable climate action in the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region by encouraging climate investment and through mutual learning and sharing.

Scientists, government delegates, climate activists from 15 countries - including the HKH members - and IPCC scientists are participating in the conference.

The first ever IPCC meeting in Nepal is being organised by the Ministry of Population and Environment (MoPE) and International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

“We would like to see the research community in Nepal and other developing countries tackle local questions and provide us with scientific literature that can feed into the new sixth assessment report (AR6) and future assessment,” said vice-chair of IPCC Working Group II, Joy Pereira.

She stated that the UN body hoped that more scientists from the region would be nominated as IPCC authors across a range of topics.

According to her, mountain regions face particular vulnerabilities to climate change, but various adaptation and mitigation options exist to make society more resilient and create opportunities for a sustainable future.

Co-chair of Working Group I of the IPCC Dr. Panmao Zhai said that the conference would provide valuable guidelines to policy makers and practitioners on addressing the challenges of climate change in the region and elsewhere.

It aims at raising awareness among the stakeholders, promoting knowledge sharing, enlisting participation of local science and research community, including indigenous mountain communities, fostering better understanding among the news media, youth and private sector, and presenting key findings of climate change studies and enable climate action among policy makers.

He warned that global warming has been making way for extreme disasters and irrecoverable loss, such as glacier melting.

“Melted glaciers can’t be recovered and along with it problems like sea-level rise, warm climate and new diseases will be created,” he warned.

Warming trends in the Himalaya are higher than the global average, which is a cause for great concerns due to its cascading effects, said a ICIMOD paper.

Director-general of ICIMOD Dr. David Molden said that there were 54,000 glaciers in the HKH and expressed concern over their losing volume, especially in the eastern part of the Himalaya – Bhutan, Meghalaya and Myanmar.

According to him, a recent study concluded that if the global warming trend continued, about 80 per cent of the glaciers would melt by 2100 AD.

Under-secretary at the MoPE Ram Hari Pantha said that the government was trying to create an enabling environment for climate smart development, and running mitigation programmes in 14 districts in the Mid-West and Far-West region.

The IPCC said in a press statement that the scientists would present the latest IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which was completed in 2014 and was a crucial input to the Paris Climate Change Agreement signed in 2015.

“AR5 found the world has the means to limit global warming and build a more prosperous and sustainable future, but pathways to limit warming to 2 degrees centigrade relative to pre-industrial levels would require substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades,” read the statement.

The IPCC was established by the United Nations Environment Programme and World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in 1988 to provide policy makers with regular scientific assessment concerning climate change, its implications and risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation strategies.

It has 195 member states.