Dubai, June 11: Nearly 60 million people living around the Himalayas will have food shortages in the coming decades as glaciers shrink and the water sources for crops dry up, a study said on Thursday.
But Dutch scientists writing in the journal Science concluded the impact would be much less than previously estimated a few years ago by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UN report in 2007 warned that hundreds of millions of people were at risk from disappearing glaciers.
The reason for the discrepancy, scientists said, is that some basins surrounding the Himalayas depend more on rainfall than melting glaciers for their water sources.
Those that do count heavily on glaciers like the Indus, Ganges and Brahamaputra basins in South Asia could see their water supplies decline by as much as 19.6% by 2050. China’s Yellow River basin, in contrast, would see a 9.5% increase precipitation as monsoon patterns change due to the changing climate.
“We show that it’s only certain areas that will be affected,” said Marc Bierkens, an Utrecht University hydrology professor, who along with Walter Immerzee and Ludovicus van Beek conducted the study. “The amount of people affected is still large. Every person is one too many but it’s much less than was first anticipated.”
–Agencies