The Norwegian Ambassador HE Mr. Thor Gislesen and the Director General of ICIMOD Dr Andreas Schild signed 30 November an agreement relating to cooperation between Norway and ICIMOD on the impact of climate change on the melting of snow and ice in the Himalayas.
The project, which will be implemented by ICIMOD, will monitor and assess changes in glaciers, snowfields, and glacio-hydrology in Nepal and develop a network and knowledge hub for regional cooperation and information exchange on glacier-related information in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas. The project will strengthen the capacity of Nepalese organisations. There will also be cooperation with Norwegian institutions which have long experience in this field.
Very few glaciers have been monitored in the Himalayas, but without this scientific information it is not possible to predict the possible impacts of climate change with any certainty. We also need a much better understanding of the amount of water contributed to rivers in the dry season by glacier and snow melt, to discover how likely it is that rivers will have less (or more) water. This is vitally important for the 210 million people in the region and the 1.3 billion people served by the rivers downstream. Read More
