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‘It’s virtually too late’ to stem losses in nature and habitat within the HKH area, says organisation at assembly in Kathmandu
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The markhor is a big wild goat native to Central and South Asia, the place it’s primarily discovered on the heights of the Karakoram. It’s the nationwide animal of Pakistan. Picture: iStock
Consultants from The Worldwide Centre for Built-in Mountain Growth (ICIMOD) referred to as for ‘daring motion’ and ‘pressing finance’ to stop collapse of nature in Excessive Mountain Asia on February 5, 2024, within the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu.
The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), one of the crucial biodiverse areas on Earth, is a ‘biosphere on the brink’, the organisation stated in a press release as 130 international consultants arrived in Nepal for the Third Lead Authors assembly of the Intergovernmental Science-Coverage Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Providers (IPBES) nexus evaluation.
ICIMOD is internet hosting the assembly at its headquarters in Kathmandu. The summit examines the linkages between meals and water safety, well being, biodiversity, and local weather change.
The researchers described the pace and scale of losses in nature and habitat within the HKH area as ‘catastrophic’. “It’s virtually too late,” Deputy Director Common Izabella Koziell informed delegates to the IPBES assembly.
She added:
4 of the world’s 36 international biodiversity hotspots are on this area. Two of the worldwide 200 eco areas, 575 Protected Areas, 335 necessary hen areas, these figures converse for themselves. But we’re in an accelerating disaster, regardless of the efforts of everybody right here and lots of within the worldwide neighborhood. Seventy per cent of the unique biodiversity has been misplaced over the past century. And but 85 per cent of mountain communities stay depending on this biodiversity, for meals, water, flood management and cultural id.
“The declines in nature throughout this area,” stated IPBES creator and ICIMOD Ecosystems Specialist Sunita Chaudhary, “are so superior and accelerating so quick they now pose a menace to the lives of not simply animal and vegetation, but additionally human societies.”
‘Water tower’
Excessive Mountain Asia includes of mountain ranges such because the Tian Shan, Kunlun Shan, Pamir, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, and naturally, the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas.
HKH, which stretches 3,500 kilometres and spans eight nations, is dwelling to many of the snow and ice on Earth exterior the poles. A minimum of 12 rivers fan out in each path throughout the Asian continent from it:
Syr Darya and Amu Darya in direction of the now-dead Aral Sea
The Tarim towards the Taklamakan
The Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra in direction of the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal
The Yellow river in direction of the Gulf of Bohai
The Yangtze in direction of the East China Sea
The Mekong in direction of the South China Sea
The Chindwin, Salween and Irrawaddy in direction of the Andaman Sea
The ‘Water Tower of Asia’ gives important ecosystem providers resembling clear water for a 3rd of the world’s inhabitants. It’s estimated to be warming at almost two occasions the typical fee of warming within the Northern Hemisphere.
The assertion by ICIMOD famous that 241 million folks stay within the HKH area, of whom 31 per cent are “food-insecure” and “half of whom face some type of malnutrition”.
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“This can be a area that have to be urgently prioritised for funding — to fund the battle to reverse nature loss and species extinction. Worldwide, we’re seeing an enormous uptick in investments in ecosystem restoration and a rising recognition of the position that nature performs in human survival. We should make sure that funding to the HKH rises at an exponential fee earlier than these fragile and essential ecosystems collapse, by constructing nature into all funding and motion. And we should speed up coverage, institutional and market reforms to make this occur. And likewise push for far more fast improve in built-in international finance, particularly for top worth and weak areas just like the HKH,” stated Chaudhary.
Mountains cowl 22 per cent of Earth’s land floor however maintain 50 per cent of the world’s international biodiversity hotspots. Given mountains’ acute vulnerability to local weather change, ICIMOD researchers have referred to as for IPBES to contemplate a devoted World Mountains evaluation.
The ICIMOD assertion famous that this was the primary time an IPBES evaluation assembly was being held in South Asia.
A gathering to advance a abstract for policymakers can be held from February 10-11, after the e lead authors of the IPBES nexus evaluation report have met from February 5-9.
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