The rate at which Pakistan’s glaciers are losing area has risen to 4.9 percent, a Senate committee was told (Express Tribune).
The figures
| | | |—|—| | Loss rate, 1990s | 3.2pc | | Loss rate, 2010-2020 | 4.9pc | | Karakoram glaciers, 1990-2020 | down about 12pc | | Regional disappearance rate | about 9pc estimated | | Potentially dangerous glacial lakes | 115 | | — unfrozen as of 5 August | 105 |
The briefing was to the Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change.
The distinction the minister insisted on
Climate Change Minister Dr Musadik Malik: “Glacier melt and flooding are two different phenomena and require different responses. Dams can help control floods, but glaciers cannot be stopped.”
That is a more useful sentence than it first appears. Pakistani flood policy debate defaults almost immediately to dams, and a dam is a storage and regulation structure for river flow. A glacial lake outburst is a wall of water, rock and ice moving down a valley — it destroys the road before it reaches any reservoir.
The 115 lakes are the acute risk, and 105 of them were unfrozen in early August.
Why the monitoring gap is the story underneath
Reliable melt data remains limited because the equipment is expensive. So the country with the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar regions is measuring their disappearance intermittently.
That matters for more than science. Pakistan’s case for international climate finance rests on demonstrating vulnerability with data, and the finance minister was at the UN General Assembly yesterday calling for faster climate financing.
The local record this month
This newspaper reported on 13 September that roads in the Kaghan and Manoor valleys washed out by monsoon floods were still being rebuilt, and on 15 September that the NDMA had issued a flood alert covering ten Gilgit-Baltistan districts including Hunza and Ghizer, where cloudburst floods had already caused disruption.
What is not established
The study behind the figures has not been named or published in the reporting we have seen, and no funding, timeline or monitoring programme was announced. No population figure has been given for communities below the 115 lakes.
[Image: The Express Tribune]
