Media Home
UN Web TV
UN Audiovisual Library
UN PhotoNEPAL / GUTERRES MELTING GLACIERS
Download
There is no media available to download.
Share
STORY: NEPAL / GUTERRES MELTING GLACIERS
TRT: 02:09
SOURCE: UN NEPAL
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 30 OCTOBER 2021, MOUNT EVEREST REGION, NEPAL / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, UN flag
30 OCTOBER 2021, MOUNT EVEREST REGION, NEPAL
2. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
"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 thirty 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 sixty-five 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 degrees, to avert the worst of climate chaos. The world can’t wait."
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
3. Wide shot, UN flag
Secretary-General António Guterres today (30 Oct) in Nepal issued an urgent call to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, “to avert the worst of climate chaos” and stop the melting glaciers and ice sheets.
The Secretary-General said, “the rooftops of the world are caving in” noting that Nepal “has lost close to one-third of its ice in just over thirty years” while Antarctica and Greenland “are losing billions of tons of ice mass every year.”
Melting glaciers, he said, “mean swollen lakes and rivers flooding, sweeping away entire communities; and seas rising at record rates – threatening coastal communities across the globe.”
Guterres explained that Nepal’s glaciers “melted sixty-five per cent faster in the last decade than they had in the previous one.”
He said, “glaciers 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.”
To conclude, the Secretary-General said, “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 degrees, to avert the worst of climate chaos. The world can’t wait."
