Himalayas, within 20 years over a billion victims of climate change

Spero News: Within the next 20 years more than 1.3 billion people will be affected by drought. The Himalayan reservoirs and rivers that cross Bangladesh, China, India and Nepal will suffer a depletion of 275 billion cubic meters of water, because of melting glaciers and pollution. This was revealed by a study of the Strategic Foresight Group, a research company based in India.

The document, published June 28, reveals disturbing scenarios. According to researchers in the next 20 years wheat and rice yields in China and India will drop by 50% because of more frequent droughts, while the food demand of the population will increase by 20%. "The availability of fresh water – states the report - will fall in all four countries due to climate change, reduced rainfall and other natural disturbances, such as pollution”. By 2050 over 200 million people will move from the Himalayan region because of lack of food and water.

According to media reports the depopulation of the Nepalese Himalayas has already begun. The newspaper Gorkha Patra, has calculated that over 10 thousand people have fled their lands because of the decrease in harvest due to the early melting of snows and the irregularity of monsoon rains. Solukhumbu district, in the foothills of the Himalayas, hundreds of residents of villages around the ice Lake Imja … have left their homes because of the flooding of the basin….

Tilicho Lake, Annapurna Region, Nepal. Shot by Kogo, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2