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TimesLIVE
4 days ago
- Politics
- TimesLIVE
Ngugi was simply ordinary — a man of the people
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the Kenyan playwright, novelist and thinker, who died on May 28, has left a huge intellectual gap in Africa's cultural and political landscape. Instead of mourning him, I have chosen to celebrate the intellectual legacy of this generous and authoritative African sage I was privileged to have encountered during my undergraduate days at Nairobi University and much later as a scholar of Ngugi and African literature. When I arrived in South Africa in 1991, Ngugi was the most widely known African writer in the academy, in spite of apartheid. As early as 1981, the widely respected South African journal, English in Africa, had dedicated a special issue to his works. His most widely referenced text then, was Decolonising the Mind. Indeed, he is the most widely taught African writer in the global north and the global south, alongside Chinua Achebe — the man who published his award winning novel, Weep Not, Child under Heinemann African Writers Series. When the prestigious Cambridge University Press decided to publish worldwide series on 'Leading Writers in Context', again it is Achebe and Ngugi who featured from Africa, and I am deeply privileged to have been asked to serve as the editor of the volume on Ngugi in Context. His works have been widely translated in several languages across the globe: Japanese, German, Chinese and in many parts of Asia. I hope we will soon see his works getting translated into African languages across the continent. During his last days, he had embarked on translating his novels written in English into Gikuyu. It needs no emphasis that Ngugi remains one of the most influential African writers over the past few decades of Africa's independence, not only for his creative works but also for his wide-ranging contributions on Africa's cultural thought and political life. Indeed, the role of the writer in shaping the cultural and political life of his people is an enduring theme in all his works. He was concerned with the role of culture as a source of historical memory and as a weapon against all forms of oppressive regimes. But he was also interested in narrative, specifically imaginative literature, as an agent of history and self-definition, an instrument for taming and naming one's environment. He was concerned with literature's role in the restoration of African communities dislocated by colonialism and the repressive postcolonial states that followed. As early as 1972, Ngugi was already drawing attention to how the tyranny of the past exerts itself on his works. He wrote: 'The novelist is haunted by a sense of the past. His work is often an attempt to come to terms with 'the thing that has been,' a struggle as it were, to sensitively register his encounter with history, his people's history' (Homecoming, 39). For Ngugi then, the novel was an instrument that wills history into being and therefore, as a writer, he always located himself at the intersection of history and literary imagination. Ngugi always insisted that colonial subjects were detached from their mainstream history and therefore their identity was shaped by forces alien to their local universe Ngugi always insisted that colonial subjects were detached from their mainstream history and therefore their identity was shaped by forces alien to their local universe. For him, the search for Africa's identity therefore lay in a reconstructive project to reassert a radical form of Africa's historiography conceived from below. At the heart of his restorative project was also his call for a return to the source, which would also involve the privileging of African languages in the production and consumption of local cultures. For him, it was only African languages that had the capacity to recover those African cultures repressed by colonialism and to equally carry the weight of a national history and memory. Genuine national literature, Ngugi argued, can only flower in local indigenous languages because literature as a cultural institution works through images and language embodied in the collective experience of a people. Ngugi always positioned himself as a writer in politics. He was hounded at home by one Kenyan political regime after the other and eventually driven into exile in the eighties by the repressive Moi regime in Kenya in the 80s. Little wonder then, that themes of dislocation, abandonment and exile dominates his works, written against the backdrop of authoritarian structures of control and imprisonment. Ngugi's early works are heavily weighted towards fiction, and the later lean towards non-fiction. In the 1960s and 1970s, which saw the publication of four novels, two plays and a collection of short stories, Ngugi produced only one volume of essays, Homecoming. But after his last major work of fiction in English, Petals of Blood (1977), Ngugi wrote a total of five collections of essays as opposed to only three novels, Devil on the Cross (1981), Matigari (1986), and his latest novel, The Wizard of the Crow (Murogi wa Kagogo (2005), written first Gikuyu before translation. But it was the establishment of a community theatre in his home village of Kamiriithu, and the staging of the play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), that really raised the ire of the Kenyan authorities, leading to the banning of the play, his arrest and detention without trial. It also marked a major turning point in Ngugi's life when in prison, he used the language of his incarceration to write his first Gikuyu novel: Caitaani Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross), on rolls of toilet paper. Subsequently, it is only Ngugi's collection of essays that he would continue to write in English, obviously aimed at the academy, with whom he continued to wrestle with over a range of cultural and political issues. The joy of reading Ngugi's essays is that they serve as a theoretical elaboration of themes and topics akin to his narrative. If Writers in Politics (1981), and Barrel of a Pen (1983) essays seek to question the colonial traditions of English and Englishness inherited at independence, Decolonising the Mind (1986), and Moving the Centre (1993) push the debate to its limits by insisting that the roots to Africa's freedom lay in the articulation of a new idiom of nationalism that would liberate the African identities from the prison house of European languages and cultures. The project should not only involve the privileging of African languages in the making of African cultures, but also the struggle for the realignment of global forces such that societies, which have been confined to the margins will gradually move to the centre, to become not just consumers but producers of global culture. It is the denial of the cultural space by the postcolonial state tyranny and global imperialism that Ngugi elaborates on in Penpoints, Gunpoint, and Dreams. Here the culture of violence and silence that has come to define the postcolonial state; the state's desire to saturate the public space with its propaganda, is counterpoised against a radically redemptive art that seeks to erect a new regime of truth by reclaiming and colonising those spaces through the barrel of the pen. In his most eloquent collection of essays, symbolically entitled Moving the Centre, Ngugi draws attention to the effect of the colonial archive in arrogating what constitutes the real historical subject to the imperial centre. When Ngugi calls for moving of the centre, he is in essence trying to suggest that in terms of history and discursive knowledges, the West has always positioned itself as the true self — the centre — while the empire remains the Other and on the periphery. Indeed, one of the legacies of the colonial encounter is a notion of history as 'the few privileged monuments' of achievement, which serves either to arrogate 'history' wholesale to the imperial centre or to erase it from the colonial archive and produce, especially in the Empire or the so-called New World Cultures, a condition of 'history-lessness', of 'no visible history'. Both notions are part of the imperial myth of history because history is defined by what is central, not what is peripheral and those not central to an assumed teleology or belief system, are without history. It seems to me that even a superficial reading of Ngugi's narrative and his critical essays over the years, point to a conscious project of transforming our inherited notions of history, especially the position of the colonial subjects as inscribed within imperial discursive practices. If the imperial narrative attempted to fix history and to read the empires history as the history of the other, by making reference to its set of signs located in its cultural landscape, Ngugi's position is that the history of Africa need not be contingent upon the imperial allegorising. Allegory here is used to mean a way of representing, of speaking for the 'other', especially in the enterprise of imperialism. Whatever the ideological drifts and shifts in his body of work, Ngugi's fundamental belief is in the restorative agency embedded in all human cultures — the return of the other to the self. This is what he celebrates in his theory of globalectics — a theory that seek seeks to destabilise the privileging Western ways of knowing and instead celebrates those many streams of knowledge, regardless of their origins, as humanities collective experience. The creation of a humanistic wholeness and healing, has been at the core of his poetics over the years. The return to memoirs over the last decade or so was perhaps his last attempt to lay bare his soul and spirit; his life history as fragments of many forces — a rich tapestry into a life crafted around complex and layered forces of family and larger biographical universe. As a person, Ngugi was profoundly warm and down-to-earth, and always carried himself around with a deep sense of humility and ease, not to mention his infectious laughter and humour. He was simply ordinary — a man of the people. May his legacy live on and his soul rest in peace until we meet again in the land our ancestors. James Ogude, Professor of African Literatures and Cultures. Professor and Senior Research Fellow, and author of Ngugi's Novels and African History. Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Scoop
28-05-2025
- Science
- Scoop
Antarctic Footprint Clean-up Challenges – How A Remote Antarctic Base Clean-up Protected One Of Earth's Clearest Lakes
Press Release – NIWA Dr Howard-Williams says while recent guidelines on cleaning up contaminated sites in Antarctica outlined in the Antarctic Clean Up Manual are useful, challenges remain particularly when not much is known about the consequences of contamination of Antarctic … The flooded station site in 2023 was a shallow submerged reef surrounded by an open water moat. The station was located on the upper left of the reef. (Antarctica New Zealand; A.D.A.M.) / Supplied The clean-up and site restoration of a New Zealand research station in Antarctica has provided valuable lessons on the challenges of contaminated sites, according to a study in the journal Polar Record, recently published by Cambridge University Press. The study found that while tonnes of contaminated materials were removed from the former Vanda field station, some residual contamination still remained. However, the remediation of the site in Antarctic's Dry Valleys, which had served as a research base for a quarter of a century, didn't affect measurably the water quality of the area's largest and deepest lake or the biological communities that colonised the station footprint. There was no detectable human-induced environmental change to the pristine Lake Vanda following the decommissioning of the research station, conclude researchers from NIWA, Waikato and Canterbury universities, and Antarctica New Zealand. The successful site rehabilitation shows that in a harsh environment, amongst delicate ecosystems, it is possible to ensure minimal impact from the restoration of a contaminated site, says NIWA aquatic scientist Dr Clive Howard-Williams. 'Located in Antarctica's largest ice-free area, the arid Dry Valleys, Vanda Station is one of the few research stations that have been decommissioned under more stringent Antarctic environmental standards. Neither minimizing human impact nor climate change may have been top-of-mind when construction commenced in 1968. The eight-building complex was built on a ridge 200m away from Lake Vanda, which has a depth of 78m and some of the clearest water on earth, with a unique warm bottom layer that is more saline than the Dead Sea.' Images showing the Vanda station over time. Vanda Station in the 1970s (top), at the time of removal in 1993 (centre) and the flooded site in 2023 (yellow boxes mark the same footprint of the station in all images). (Images: Antarctica New Zealand; A.D.A.M.) / Supplied The station facilities included a workshop, lab, generator room, huts for a dozen people, and a toilet above a removable drum, with a tractor hauling supplies and fuel from three helicopter landing areas to the station. The station was occupied every summer from 1968 (and even had staff year-round for three winters), hosting scientists, surveyors, maintenance staff, aircraft crews and VIPs. By the time it was closed in 1992, the site had hosted nearly 17,000 person-days – the equivalent of nearly 46 years. For a polar desert site, this is a substantial human footprint, says Antarctic inland water expert and veteran of more than three decades in the Dry Valleys, Waikato University's Dr Ian Hawes. It wasn't the cumulative human impact that prompted the decision to close the research station, but the consequences of changes in climate. 'While the station was located 15 m above the level of the large, ice-covered Lake Vanda, over time more glacial meltwater flowed from Antarctica's longest waterway, the Onyx River, into the closed-basin lake. So by 1991, it was just 2.5m below the site. The threat of inundation meant removing the buildings and structures became critically important. In 1991, the Antarctic Treaty Parties had just agreed on the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which provides for the comprehensive protection of the Antarctic environment. Its Annex III on waste management and disposal outlines the requirements for the management of wastes associated with present and future activities. Annex III called for programmes to clean up existing waste disposal sites and abandoned work sites so long as their removal didn't result in a greater environmental impact than leaving the structure in its existing location. It was decided that decommissions of the station would be compliant with the Protocol even though New Zealand did not implement the Protocol into domestic legislation until 1994 as the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act.' One concern was that compounds not normally found in the lake, such as organic phosphates, hydrocarbons, fats and soot, might contaminate Lake Vanda, says Professor Hawes. 'A site survey found soil contamination around the station and other locations with hydrocarbons and domestic waste, including high metal concentrations, and contamination associated with detergents, food scraps, packaging and fuels, particularly in the area known as Greywater Gully. If contaminants or nutrients were released into the lake, it could affect the unique microbial mat communities that grow on the floor of Lake Vanda .So, a great deal of effort was put into removing the most contaminated soils and groundwater before the site was flooded. To assess the effectiveness of the rehabilitation, these microbial mats have been monitored, along with levels of trace metals and nutrients in the lake water at the station site.' Rather than return the site to a pristine state, the plan focused on ensuring minimum impact on the lake ecosystem, ensuring that benefits outweighed the damage of remediation activities, says Dr Howard-Williams. 'The plan included excavating and removing the soils and contaminated groundwater, including lead-based painted rocks and fuel-splattered dirt, and returning the terrain to a more natural, pre-human appearance. Around 400kg of contaminated groundwater from the gully along with 7,000kg of soil were shipped back to Scott Base for treatment and disposal.' Results showed that while initial research suggested contaminants from the gully could potentially impact the lake's ecosystem, 20 years after decommissioning and the complete flooding of the site, there was no evidence of contaminants entering the lake water and the microbial communities colonising the station site were not significantly different from those developing in uncontaminated areas. Dr Howard-Williams says while recent guidelines on cleaning up contaminated sites in Antarctica outlined in the Antarctic Clean Up Manual are useful, challenges remain particularly when not much is known about the consequences of contamination of Antarctic ecosystems. 'It has been estimated that across Antarctica there may be around two million cubic metres of abandoned waste materials and hydro-carbon contaminated sediment. Effective remediation in Antarctica requires early planning, robust environmental baselines, and adaptive strategies grounded in research – recognising that full decontamination is rarely possible and must be balanced against the risk of further environmental harm. Despite the lack of comparable data, detailed clean-up guidelines, and contaminant baselines, Vanda's clean up not only demonstrates New Zealand's commitment to good environmental management, but it will also serve as an example to other countries involved in operations across Antarctica.' Content Sourced from Original url
Scoop
28-05-2025
- Science
- Scoop
Antarctic Footprint Clean-up Challenges – How A Remote Antarctic Base Clean-up Protected One Of Earth's Clearest Lakes
Press Release – NIWA Dr Howard-Williams says while recent guidelines on cleaning up contaminated sites in Antarctica outlined in the Antarctic Clean Up Manual are useful, challenges remain particularly when not much is known about the consequences of contamination of Antarctic … The clean-up and site restoration of a New Zealand research station in Antarctica has provided valuable lessons on the challenges of contaminated sites, according to a study in the journal Polar Record, recently published by Cambridge University Press. The study found that while tonnes of contaminated materials were removed from the former Vanda field station, some residual contamination still remained. However, the remediation of the site in Antarctic's Dry Valleys, which had served as a research base for a quarter of a century, didn't affect measurably the water quality of the area's largest and deepest lake or the biological communities that colonised the station footprint. There was no detectable human-induced environmental change to the pristine Lake Vanda following the decommissioning of the research station, conclude researchers from NIWA, Waikato and Canterbury universities, and Antarctica New Zealand. The successful site rehabilitation shows that in a harsh environment, amongst delicate ecosystems, it is possible to ensure minimal impact from the restoration of a contaminated site, says NIWA aquatic scientist Dr Clive Howard-Williams. 'Located in Antarctica's largest ice-free area, the arid Dry Valleys, Vanda Station is one of the few research stations that have been decommissioned under more stringent Antarctic environmental standards. Neither minimizing human impact nor climate change may have been top-of-mind when construction commenced in 1968. The eight-building complex was built on a ridge 200m away from Lake Vanda, which has a depth of 78m and some of the clearest water on earth, with a unique warm bottom layer that is more saline than the Dead Sea.' The station facilities included a workshop, lab, generator room, huts for a dozen people, and a toilet above a removable drum, with a tractor hauling supplies and fuel from three helicopter landing areas to the station. The station was occupied every summer from 1968 (and even had staff year-round for three winters), hosting scientists, surveyors, maintenance staff, aircraft crews and VIPs. By the time it was closed in 1992, the site had hosted nearly 17,000 person-days – the equivalent of nearly 46 years. For a polar desert site, this is a substantial human footprint, says Antarctic inland water expert and veteran of more than three decades in the Dry Valleys, Waikato University's Dr Ian Hawes. It wasn't the cumulative human impact that prompted the decision to close the research station, but the consequences of changes in climate. 'While the station was located 15 m above the level of the large, ice-covered Lake Vanda, over time more glacial meltwater flowed from Antarctica's longest waterway, the Onyx River, into the closed-basin lake. So by 1991, it was just 2.5m below the site. The threat of inundation meant removing the buildings and structures became critically important. In 1991, the Antarctic Treaty Parties had just agreed on the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which provides for the comprehensive protection of the Antarctic environment. Its Annex III on waste management and disposal outlines the requirements for the management of wastes associated with present and future activities. Annex III called for programmes to clean up existing waste disposal sites and abandoned work sites so long as their removal didn't result in a greater environmental impact than leaving the structure in its existing location. It was decided that decommissions of the station would be compliant with the Protocol even though New Zealand did not implement the Protocol into domestic legislation until 1994 as the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act.' One concern was that compounds not normally found in the lake, such as organic phosphates, hydrocarbons, fats and soot, might contaminate Lake Vanda, says Professor Hawes. 'A site survey found soil contamination around the station and other locations with hydrocarbons and domestic waste, including high metal concentrations, and contamination associated with detergents, food scraps, packaging and fuels, particularly in the area known as Greywater Gully. If contaminants or nutrients were released into the lake, it could affect the unique microbial mat communities that grow on the floor of Lake Vanda .So, a great deal of effort was put into removing the most contaminated soils and groundwater before the site was flooded. To assess the effectiveness of the rehabilitation, these microbial mats have been monitored, along with levels of trace metals and nutrients in the lake water at the station site.' Rather than return the site to a pristine state, the plan focused on ensuring minimum impact on the lake ecosystem, ensuring that benefits outweighed the damage of remediation activities, says Dr Howard-Williams. 'The plan included excavating and removing the soils and contaminated groundwater, including lead-based painted rocks and fuel-splattered dirt, and returning the terrain to a more natural, pre-human appearance. Around 400kg of contaminated groundwater from the gully along with 7,000kg of soil were shipped back to Scott Base for treatment and disposal.' Results showed that while initial research suggested contaminants from the gully could potentially impact the lake's ecosystem, 20 years after decommissioning and the complete flooding of the site, there was no evidence of contaminants entering the lake water and the microbial communities colonising the station site were not significantly different from those developing in uncontaminated areas. Dr Howard-Williams says while recent guidelines on cleaning up contaminated sites in Antarctica outlined in the Antarctic Clean Up Manual are useful, challenges remain particularly when not much is known about the consequences of contamination of Antarctic ecosystems. 'It has been estimated that across Antarctica there may be around two million cubic metres of abandoned waste materials and hydro-carbon contaminated sediment. Effective remediation in Antarctica requires early planning, robust environmental baselines, and adaptive strategies grounded in research – recognising that full decontamination is rarely possible and must be balanced against the risk of further environmental harm. Despite the lack of comparable data, detailed clean-up guidelines, and contaminant baselines, Vanda's clean up not only demonstrates New Zealand's commitment to good environmental management, but it will also serve as an example to other countries involved in operations across Antarctica.'
Scoop
28-05-2025
- Science
- Scoop
Antarctic Footprint Clean-up Challenges - How A Remote Antarctic Base Clean-up Protected One Of Earth's Clearest Lakes
The clean-up and site restoration of a New Zealand research station in Antarctica has provided valuable lessons on the challenges of contaminated sites, according to a study in the journal Polar Record, recently published by Cambridge University Press. The study found that while tonnes of contaminated materials were removed from the former Vanda field station, some residual contamination still remained. However, the remediation of the site in Antarctic's Dry Valleys, which had served as a research base for a quarter of a century, didn't affect measurably the water quality of the area's largest and deepest lake or the biological communities that colonised the station footprint. There was no detectable human-induced environmental change to the pristine Lake Vanda following the decommissioning of the research station, conclude researchers from NIWA, Waikato and Canterbury universities, and Antarctica New Zealand. The successful site rehabilitation shows that in a harsh environment, amongst delicate ecosystems, it is possible to ensure minimal impact from the restoration of a contaminated site, says NIWA aquatic scientist Dr Clive Howard-Williams. "Located in Antarctica's largest ice-free area, the arid Dry Valleys, Vanda Station is one of the few research stations that have been decommissioned under more stringent Antarctic environmental standards. Neither minimizing human impact nor climate change may have been top-of-mind when construction commenced in 1968. The eight-building complex was built on a ridge 200m away from Lake Vanda, which has a depth of 78m and some of the clearest water on earth, with a unique warm bottom layer that is more saline than the Dead Sea." The station facilities included a workshop, lab, generator room, huts for a dozen people, and a toilet above a removable drum, with a tractor hauling supplies and fuel from three helicopter landing areas to the station. The station was occupied every summer from 1968 (and even had staff year-round for three winters), hosting scientists, surveyors, maintenance staff, aircraft crews and VIPs. By the time it was closed in 1992, the site had hosted nearly 17,000 person-days - the equivalent of nearly 46 years. For a polar desert site, this is a substantial human footprint, says Antarctic inland water expert and veteran of more than three decades in the Dry Valleys, Waikato University's Dr Ian Hawes. It wasn't the cumulative human impact that prompted the decision to close the research station, but the consequences of changes in climate. "While the station was located 15 m above the level of the large, ice-covered Lake Vanda, over time more glacial meltwater flowed from Antarctica's longest waterway, the Onyx River, into the closed-basin lake. So by 1991, it was just 2.5m below the site. The threat of inundation meant removing the buildings and structures became critically important. In 1991, the Antarctic Treaty Parties had just agreed on the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which provides for the comprehensive protection of the Antarctic environment. Its Annex III on waste management and disposal outlines the requirements for the management of wastes associated with present and future activities. Annex III called for programmes to clean up existing waste disposal sites and abandoned work sites so long as their removal didn't result in a greater environmental impact than leaving the structure in its existing location. It was decided that decommissions of the station would be compliant with the Protocol even though New Zealand did not implement the Protocol into domestic legislation until 1994 as the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act." One concern was that compounds not normally found in the lake, such as organic phosphates, hydrocarbons, fats and soot, might contaminate Lake Vanda, says Professor Hawes. "A site survey found soil contamination around the station and other locations with hydrocarbons and domestic waste, including high metal concentrations, and contamination associated with detergents, food scraps, packaging and fuels, particularly in the area known as Greywater Gully. If contaminants or nutrients were released into the lake, it could affect the unique microbial mat communities that grow on the floor of Lake Vanda .So, a great deal of effort was put into removing the most contaminated soils and groundwater before the site was flooded. To assess the effectiveness of the rehabilitation, these microbial mats have been monitored, along with levels of trace metals and nutrients in the lake water at the station site." Rather than return the site to a pristine state, the plan focused on ensuring minimum impact on the lake ecosystem, ensuring that benefits outweighed the damage of remediation activities, says Dr Howard-Williams. "The plan included excavating and removing the soils and contaminated groundwater, including lead-based painted rocks and fuel-splattered dirt, and returning the terrain to a more natural, pre-human appearance. Around 400kg of contaminated groundwater from the gully along with 7,000kg of soil were shipped back to Scott Base for treatment and disposal." Results showed that while initial research suggested contaminants from the gully could potentially impact the lake's ecosystem, 20 years after decommissioning and the complete flooding of the site, there was no evidence of contaminants entering the lake water and the microbial communities colonising the station site were not significantly different from those developing in uncontaminated areas. Dr Howard-Williams says while recent guidelines on cleaning up contaminated sites in Antarctica outlined in the Antarctic Clean Up Manual are useful, challenges remain particularly when not much is known about the consequences of contamination of Antarctic ecosystems. "It has been estimated that across Antarctica there may be around two million cubic metres of abandoned waste materials and hydro-carbon contaminated sediment. Effective remediation in Antarctica requires early planning, robust environmental baselines, and adaptive strategies grounded in research - recognising that full decontamination is rarely possible and must be balanced against the risk of further environmental harm. Despite the lack of comparable data, detailed clean-up guidelines, and contaminant baselines, Vanda's clean up not only demonstrates New Zealand's commitment to good environmental management, but it will also serve as an example to other countries involved in operations across Antarctica."
Time of India
16-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Himalayas sounding alarm of climate change: Bhupendra Yadav
Dehradun: Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav flagged the growing ecological vulnerability of the Himalayas , which is marked by accelerated glacier melt, while addressing ' Sagarmatha Sambaad ' -- a global dialogue on climate change and its impact on mountainous regions -- in Kathmandu on Friday. "The science is clear. The Himalayas are sounding the alarm ," Yadav said, warning that climate change is hastening glacier retreat and endangering water security for downstream populations. He added that Himalayan communities are under threat despite contributing little to the climate crisis, and called for regional cooperation to share scientific knowledge and protect these fragile ecosystems. The Union minister's call for action comes on the heels of a study published in 'Journal of Glaciology' by Cambridge University Press which revealed a troubling trend at Himachal Pradesh's Gepang Gath glacier: rapid glacial retreat coupled with the dramatic expansion of its proglacial lake -- a water body that forms at the front or side of a glacier and is typically dammed by moraine, glacial ice, or debris. Over the past six decades, this lake has grown nearly sixfold, from 0.2 km² in 1962 to 1.2 km² in 2023. Led by scientists from the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research under the ministry of earth sciences, the study links this expansion directly to the glacier's retreat, further accelerated by calving (the breaking off of ice chunks from the glacier's terminus). Between 2014 and 2023, Gepang Gath retreated 480m, resulting in substantial surface area loss and volume loss (21.7 million cubic metres of ice). The glacier's mass balance—a critical measure of its health, reflecting the net gain or loss of ice—has shown a consistently negative trend, indicating it is losing more mass than it gains. The study highlights a dangerous feedback loop: as the lake grows, its relatively warmer water accelerates melting at the glacier's edge, triggering further calving. This retreat creates more room for the lake to expand, reinforcing the cycle and turning a once-stable glacier into a rapidly vanishing ice mass. The consequences extend well beyond Gepang Gath. Chandra River, fed by meltwater from this glacier and over 210 others in the basin, supports agriculture and hydropower downstream. Continued ice loss could strain water availability, while the expanding proglacial lake raises the risk of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)—sudden, destructive floods caused by the abrupt release of water from glacier-fed lakes. GLOFs was, again, something Yadv spoke about at length in Kathmandu. To prevent such disasters, the study calls for urgent measures, including the establishment of early warning systems for the proglacial lake and enhanced monitoring of glacier-lake dynamics. These recommendations align with Yadav's five-point global action plan to tackle shared ecological challenges in mountainous regions. One key measure he outlined was building climate resilience through investments in adaptation strategies, early warning systems for hazards like GLOFs, and the development of climate-resilient infrastructure in high-altitude areas. Gepang Gath is not an isolated case. Across the Himalayas, many lake-terminating glaciers are undergoing similar transformations. The study warns that unchecked glacier retreat and expanding proglacial lakes could severely impact water security in South Asia, where millions rely on glacier-fed rivers for drinking water, agriculture, and energy. (With agency inputs) Dehradun: Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav flagged the growing ecological vulnerability of the Himalayas, which is marked by accelerated glacier melt, while addressing 'Sagarmatha Sambaad' -- a global dialogue on climate change and its impact on mountainous regions -- in Kathmandu on Friday. "The science is clear. The Himalayas are sounding the alarm," Yadav said, warning that climate change is hastening glacier retreat and endangering water security for downstream populations. He added that Himalayan communities are under threat despite contributing little to the climate crisis, and called for regional cooperation to share scientific knowledge and protect these fragile ecosystems. The Union minister's call for action comes on the heels of a study published in 'Journal of Glaciology' by Cambridge University Press which revealed a troubling trend at Himachal Pradesh's Gepang Gath glacier: rapid glacial retreat coupled with the dramatic expansion of its proglacial lake -- a water body that forms at the front or side of a glacier and is typically dammed by moraine, glacial ice, or debris. Over the past six decades, this lake has grown nearly sixfold, from 0.2 km² in 1962 to 1.2 km² in 2023. Led by scientists from the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research under the ministry of earth sciences, the study links this expansion directly to the glacier's retreat, further accelerated by calving (the breaking off of ice chunks from the glacier's terminus). Between 2014 and 2023, Gepang Gath retreated 480m, resulting in substantial surface area loss and volume loss (21.7 million cubic metres of ice). The glacier's mass balance—a critical measure of its health, reflecting the net gain or loss of ice—has shown a consistently negative trend, indicating it is losing more mass than it gains. The study highlights a dangerous feedback loop: as the lake grows, its relatively warmer water accelerates melting at the glacier's edge, triggering further calving. This retreat creates more room for the lake to expand, reinforcing the cycle and turning a once-stable glacier into a rapidly vanishing ice mass. The consequences extend well beyond Gepang Gath. Chandra River, fed by meltwater from this glacier and over 210 others in the basin, supports agriculture and hydropower downstream. Continued ice loss could strain water availability, while the expanding proglacial lake raises the risk of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)—sudden, destructive floods caused by the abrupt release of water from glacier-fed lakes. GLOFs was, again, something Yadv spoke about at length in Kathmandu. To prevent such disasters, the study calls for urgent measures, including the establishment of early warning systems for the proglacial lake and enhanced monitoring of glacier-lake dynamics. These recommendations align with Yadav's five-point global action plan to tackle shared ecological challenges in mountainous regions. One key measure he outlined was building climate resilience through investments in adaptation strategies, early warning systems for hazards like GLOFs, and the development of climate-resilient infrastructure in high-altitude areas. Gepang Gath is not an isolated case. Across the Himalayas, many lake-terminating glaciers are undergoing similar transformations. The study warns that unchecked glacier retreat and expanding proglacial lakes could severely impact water security in South Asia, where millions rely on glacier-fed rivers for drinking water, agriculture, and energy. (With agency inputs)
