A numbers game

On August 31, “Kathmandu to Copenhagen 2009,” a two-day regional conference on climate change on the theme “A vision for address[ing] climate change risks and vulnerabilities in the Himalayas” will begin here. Almost as if to set the stage for this, on August 10, WWF Nepal launched their report, “New Species Discoveries – The Eastern Himalayas: Where Worlds Collide.”[break]

The report is both optimistic and cautious: a total of 353 species of flora and fauna recorded between 1998 and 2008 (an average of 35 new species per year) in a region with an extremely rich biodiversity yet to be fully studied, but increasingly threatened by climate change. Of the total, 94 of those species were found in Nepal.

Climate change comes with a few numbers of its own: 390PPM (parts per million), the earth’s current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas causing global warming. The amount it needs to be ideal? It is 350PPM.

“The slightest change can have a major impact on the habitat, bringing an imbalance to the symbiotic relationship in the ecosystem that leads to extinction of certain species,” Shubash Lohani, Senior Program Officer of the Eastern Himalayas Program at WWF-US, explained about the fragile mountain ecosystem from his Washington DC office.

Indeed, a WWF research conducted with two bio-indicators, Apollo Butterfly, and Pika Hare, in the Langtang region in Nepal has shown some direct implications of climate change in animal habitat. The Apollo Butterflies were found at 3,000 meters above sea level, 500 meters higher than their normal range, while the Pika Hare, too, was found to have adapted to 100 meters above its natural habitat. Both habitat changes occurred in a course of about 15 years.

These kinds of subtle changes in the habitat of one species can imply the increase in vulnerability of the other.

“Habitat Specialist species can exist only in their specific habitats. So even a slight change can increase the chances of losing these species,” says Lohani, and adds, “Especially if the given species is unable to disperse to another suitable area.”

Changes in the Himalayas, however, may not be all that subtle. “The Melting Himalayas: Regional Challenges and Local Impacts of Climate Change on Mountain Ecosystems and Livelihoods” (June 2007) published by International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) cites, “Warming in the Himalayas has been much greater than the global average of 0.74C over the last 100 years… warming in Nepal was 0.6°C per decade between 1977 and 2000. Warming in Nepal and Tibet has been progressively greater with elevation.”

It is not just the loss or endangerment of biodiversity in the Himalaya that is alarming. Climate change is threatening biodiversity in every region and terrain.

“New analyses suggest that 15–37% of a sample of 1,103 land plants and animals would eventually become extinct as a result of climate changes expected by 2050. For some of these species, there will no longer be anywhere suitable to live. Others will be unable to reach places where the climate is suitable. A rapid shift to technologies that do not produce greenhouse gases, combined with carbon sequestration, could save 15–20% of species from extinction,” the scientific journal Nature wrote in 2004.

This year, at the inauguration of the Regional Climate Change Workshop hosted by IUCN in India, Kinsuk Mitra of Winrock, India, said: “Climate change will increase species extinction… 24% of species will be extinct or threatened with extinction within 50 years.”

Species extinction today is of course intricately linked to human society and activity. While climate change is increasingly becoming a dominant factor, there are other human activities putting pressure on biodiversity too.

“One thing is very clear to our mind, climate change is going to happen, that will definitely have impact on smaller species and larger organisms, including forests and plants and they may or may not make it. We are building models for 2 degree change and 4 degree change in temperature and the scenario is not very good,” Tariq Aziz, head of the Living Himalayas Initiative, WWF, told Liam Cochrane on Radio Australia, two days after the “New Species Discoveries – The Eastern Himalayas: Where Worlds Collide” was released.

“A lot of these places have been taken over by human beings, agriculture, developmental projects and we might lose our corridors and linkages between these ecosystems for animals to move and that will be a disaster.”

It also applies to other cases. Earlier in the year, in June, a study on the Caribbean coral reef, conducted by researchers from the University of East Anglia and Canada’s Simon Fraser University, also makes a case: “We suggest that the last period of decline [of Caribbean coral reefs] is partly due to climate change, but also due to several other human impacts such as over-fishing and coastal development,” Lorenzo Alvarez of the University of East Anglia, who led the study, said during the report’s release.

Still, “There is growing evidence that climate change will become one of the major drivers of species extinctions in the 21st Century,” an IUCN report notes.

These are human-induced disasters – the various factors eroding our biodiversity, and climate change. And these are disasters that will be the human society’s greatest losses too. They are also problems that we can begin to work solving aggressively, provided there is a political will. The 353 new species recorded in the Eastern Himalaya in 10 years is an amazing feat. But that will mean very little if we miss the 350 mark at COP15.

(The author could be reached at kashish@350nepal.org)