Mount Everest Glaciers Shrinking, Secretary-General Warns in Message, Declaring “Stop the Madness”, Avert Worst of Climate Chaos by Limiting Temperature Rise

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message on the glaciers from the Mount Everest region, in Nepal today:

I am in Nepal to send a message to the world:  The rooftops of the world are caving in.

This tragedy is unfolding in two perilous chapters.  Phase one is the story of melting glaciers and ice sheets.  Record temperatures mean record glacier melt.  Nepal has lost close to one third of its ice in just over 30 years.

Antarctica and Greenland are losing billions of tons of ice mass every year.  Melting glaciers mean swollen lakes and rivers flooding, sweeping away entire communities, and seas rising at record rates — threatening coastal communities across the globe.

The crisis is gaining speed.  Nepal’s glaciers melted 65 per cent faster in the last decade than they had in the previous one.

That means phase two of this tragedy looms ever larger — the disappearance of glaciers altogether.  Glaciers are icy reservoirs — the ones here in the Himalayas supply fresh water to well over a billion people.  When they shrink, so do river flows.

In the future, major Himalayan rivers like the Indus, the Ganges and Brahmaputra could have massively reduced flows.  Combined with saltwater intrusion, that would decimate deltas.

That spells catastrophe:  low-lying countries and communities erased forever; millions of people on the move with fierce competition for water and land; and floods, droughts and landslides accelerating worldwide.

I am here today to cry out from the rooftop of the world:  Stop the madness.  The glaciers are retreating, but we cannot.  We must end the fossil fuel age.

We must act now to protect people on the frontline and to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C to avert the worst of climate chaos.  The world can’t wait.