collapse<\/a> of a Himalayan glacier in late August along the Nepal-Tibet border, which caused cascading landslides and flash floods in the \u200bvalleys below. At least 1,300 people have been confirmed dead, \u200band more than 5,300 are missing across Nepal and China’s \u2060Tibet region.<\/p>\nAs glaciers retreat, they are leaving behind unstable glacial lakes \u200bheld back by little more than loose rock and ice, above valleys \u200bwhere millions of people live, the study found.<\/p>\n
The study was produced by Systemiq, a sustainability advisory firm, together with the Integrated Mountain Initiative, the International Centre for Integrated \u200bMountain Development, and India’s G.B. Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment.<\/p>\n
Himalayan \u200bglacier mass loss had accelerated in recent decades, while only 21 glaciers were currently \u200cmonitored \u2060on the ground out of an estimated 40,000 glaciers across the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region, a vast mountain system spanning eight countries from Afghanistan to Myanmar, the study found.<\/p>\n
Close to 200 glacial lakes in India had \u200bbeen identified as \u200bhigh risk, with \u206056 classified as “very high risk”, leaving millions exposed downstream.<\/p>\n
As the region neared “peak water”, the point when river flows \u200bstop rising and start declining, it would have \u200bprofound implications \u2060for water security. As the Himalayas underpinned more than 20% of India’s GDP, the region made up a key piece of the country’s national \u2060economic infrastructure, \u200bupon which hundreds of millions of people \u200bdepended.<\/p>\n
Though making up around 18% of India’s land, the Himalayan region accounted for roughly 35% \u200bof the country’s natural disasters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Himalayas are approaching a tipping point as glaciers melt faster than a decade ago, threatening water security…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[2885,246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-625099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}