ISLAMABAD Glacial lakes have started forming in the Siachen region because of global warming and India's military presence, posing serious risk to Pakistan's future food security, according to Pakistani experts.
Director-General of Pakistan Meteorological Department Dr Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry told Dawn here on Sunday that both countries should take steps to ensure that the Himalayan glaciers were not disturbed.
He said the presence of Indian army in the region was causing rapid melting, damaging the glaciers. He said Pakistan's agriculture was dependant on Himalayan glaciers and global warming and military presence could pose risk to the country's food security.
Arshad H. Abbasi, an environmentalist and a visiting research fellow at Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), said a large lake was observed in the middle of Siachen Glacier during the summer with the help of high-resolution imagery.
'This is the most significant impact of Indian army's presence on the glacier. This also establishes that anti-environment activities of Indian army are now posing great threat to global climate. When the lake bursts, a massive part of the glacier would rapidly melt,' he said.
The lake, which is almost half a kilometre long, is situated at 35.47 degrees north and 77.07 degrees east. According to him, the appearance of the 'highest glacial lake' at an altitude of 15,500 feet proves that Indian military presence was resulting in an unprecedented rate of glacier shrinkage.
Environmentalists say that the speed of Siachen Glacier's retreat is about 110 metres a year.
'The extraordinary melting of Siachen and other glaciers is caused by human activity and is responsible for destructive snow avalanches on both sides of the Saltoro Ridge.'
He said that glaciers on the Pakistani side were not only stable but moderately growing. 'This has been established through studies conducted by various independent international researchers. The Baltoro Glacier, on the other side of the same Saltoro Ridge, has remained stable, compared after glacial mass balance calculated in 1904.'
Mr Abbasi said that blaming only global warming for the rapid melting of Siachen was a wrong premise. 'This is a deceptive and false impression which is deliberately being conveyed to international community by New Delhi to save Indian army from this serious and catastrophic environmental crime.'
In order to facilitate its troops on Siachen, India had resorted to cutting glacial ice using chemicals, turning it into 'the fastest melting glacier,' he said.
'War-specific developments are death sentences for Himalayan glaciers,' he said.
He said dumping chemicals, metals, organic and human waste, daily leakages of about 2,000 gallons of kerosene oil from 250-kilometre-long plastic pipeline was accelerating the melting process.
He claimed that the glaciers in the Himalayan region were receding faster than in any other part of the world because of the Siachen conflict. It has been proved with scientific data that other Himalayan glaciers located in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh that make almost 87 per cent of Dawn Staff Reporter's glaciers are melting because of infrastructure developed to gain access to Siachen by various means, including the highest road in the world - the Delhi-Manali-Leh-Siachen route.
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