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solonavi 18 July 2007 Global Warming, Habitat 141 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

WWF

“If I compare this land to what it used to be in the 1960s, it is difficult for me to recognize it,” recalls Qi Mei Duo Jie, a 71-year-old nomadic herder from Yanshiping in China’s central-western Qinghai Province.”
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Qi Mei Duo Jie’s family has been raising yaks for at least three generations.

“This year has been very dry, and with less grassland it will take longer to properly feed and raise livestock,” he says. “This will mean a lower income for us.”

To compound the situation, warmer climate conditions are attracting more cattle and sheep farmers to this harsh but beautiful high-altitude area, putting additional pressure on the already fragile alpine landscape. This pressure is also starting to squeeze out local wildlife, such as Tibetan antelopes, that depend on the grasslands too. There have even been reports of brown bears wandering close to villages in search of food.

And if bears roaming around town aren’t enough to lose sleep over, the remote rural region is experiencing pollution from greenhouse gases that have been emitted from big cities as far away as Beijing and Shanghai.

These are some of the consequences of climate change on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

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WWF, the global conservation organization, is embarking on a series of studies on how high-altitude wetlands in the Yangtze source area — including the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and parts of the Kunlun Mountains — can cope with changing climate conditions. Results of the studies will help WWF and its Chinese partners come up with practical solutions to protect vulnerable ecosystems from the adverse affects of climate change.

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Experts today agree on one trend: Glaciers, rivers, wetlands and lakes — all elements of the fragile high-altitude ecosystem — are being altered at a speed never seen before.

Professor Li has personally witnessed the retreat of Yuzhu glacier, the highest peak in the Eastern Kunlun Mountains.

“I was in Xidatan, near Yuzhu Peak, for the first time in the 1980s, and when I went back, ten years later, the tongue of the glacier had retreated by 50 metres,” he says. “Nowadays it is about 100m higher than it used to be.”

According to scientists, projected climate change over the next century will further increase the rate at which glaciers melt. In particular, glaciers in China, as well as Nepal and India, are receding at an average rate of 10–15 metres per year.

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In early June, China released its first Climate Change National Action Plan. The plan is the first formal acknowledgement of China’s goal to reduce CO2 emissions through a cut of energy consumption by 20 per cent per unit of GDP by 2010.

For WWF, this clarification of the country’s basic stand on the issue is expected to play a positive role and stimulate an international agreement on greenhouse gases emission cuts in the future.

Glaciers in China, as well as India and Nepal, are receding at an average rate of 10–15 metres per year. Yuzhu Peak, Kunlun Mountains, China.
© Li Lin / WWF China