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Himalayas

Environment

India to establish regional climate centre for Himalayas, to benefit country, neighbours: IMD chief

India is planning to establish a regional climate centre for the Himalayan mountain region which will not only provide weather-related advices within the country but also to its neighbours, India Meteorological Department (IMD) Director General Mrutunjay Mohapatra said on Monday. Mohapatra said the work for establishing such a centre has already begun and talks are also on with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

China is also building a similar regional climate centre on its side of the Himalayas, he said. Addressing a webinar on ‘Weather and Climate Services over Mountains Region’, Mohapatra said India has the eastern ghats, western ghats along the east and the west coast and the Myanmar hills in the northeast. Considering the size of Himalayas and its role in India’s hydrology, meteorology, disaster management, ecosystem and many other activities, the world has correctly recognised it as the ‘third pole of the world’, he noted.

As a part of the ecosystem, as a part of the land, ocean, atmosphere system, the mountains, including the Himalayas and all other hill ranges play a significant role, Mohapatra stressed. Being a data sparse region, the relative observational network is limited as compared to the plain ranges of the country, Mohapatra observed. He said there is a scope to improve further the physical understanding of various processes occurring in these mountains regions, their modelling and hence the forecasting and warning services.

“At the same time, we have to develop the climate applications scenarios, especially with respect to water sector, industries, tourism, agriculture, specifically in these mountains regions.

“We are planning to establish a regional climate centre for the mountains region and it will be providing advices not only to India but also to the entire region in the Himalayas,” he said.

The RCC is likely to come up in Delhi, Mohapatra later told the PTI. The RCC will provide weather-related services specially for the farmers and tribes residing there. He added that Himansh, the country’s remote and high altitude research centre, established in 2016, will also undertake weather research activities in the Himalayas. Mohapatra said a lot of initiatives have been taken by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and IMD for augmentation of observational network with deployment of doppler radars and automated weather stations and with the development of region specific numerical models and application activities with improvement in forecast activities and warning services. He said the disasters in the mountainous regions play a dominant role in deciding socio-economic activities.

Mohapatra said natural calamities in Himalayas like the earthquakes are well-recognised — the heavy rainfall leading to cloud bursts and also many other phenomena that affect the local agriculture, local industry, local bio-system, local lives. “We also have various types of disaster phenomenon in other hill ranges like western and eastern ghats. In the recent times, we all have witnessed that because of the monsoon rains, how the landslides, which have generally realised in the Himalayan ranges or the northeast states… how disastrous landslides have been realised in Karnataka and Kerala states,” Mohapatra said.

He added that similar landslides have taken place when cyclones have crossed Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

International

Beijing takes its South China Sea strategy to the Himalayas

The construction, recorded by satellite photos, followed a playbook China has used for years. It has brushed aside neighbours’ claims of sovereignty to cement its position in territorial disputes by unilaterally changing the facts on the ground.
By New York Times
,Just in time for its National Day in October, China completed construction of a new village high in the mountains where the Chinese region of Tibet meets the kingdom of Bhutan. A hundred people moved into two dozen new homes beside the Torsa River and celebrated the holiday by raising China’s flag and singing the national anthem.

“Each of us is a coordinate of the great motherland,” a border guard was quoted as saying by an official state news agency, China Tibetan News.

The problem is, these new “coordinates” are more than a mile inside what Bhutan considers its territory.
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The construction, documented in satellite photos, followed a playbook China has used for years. It has brushed aside neighbours’ claims of sovereignty to cement its position in territorial disputes by unilaterally changing the facts on the ground.

It used the same tactics in the South China Sea, where it fortified and armed shoals claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines, despite promising the United States not to do so.

This year, China’s military built up forces in the Himalayas and crossed into territory that India claimed was on its side of the de facto border. That led to China’s bloodiest clash in decades, leaving at least 21 Indian soldiers dead, along with an unknown number of Chinese troops. The violence badly soured relations that had been steadily improving.

Even when challenged, China’s territorial grabs are difficult to reverse short of the use of force, as the Indian government has learned. Since the dispute at the border, Chinese troops have remained camped in areas that India once controlled.

“In the end, it reflects the consolidation of China’s control over the area it claims,” said M. Taylor Fravel, director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on China’s military.

Over the past year, China has moved aggressively against many of its neighbours, seemingly with little regard for diplomatic or geopolitical fallout. Its actions reflect the ambition of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to assert the country’s territorial claims, economic interests and strategic needs around the world.

Xi often cites China’s historical grievances against foreign encroachment and colonisation, using its past to justify its aggressive strategic activities.

The construction of the Himalayan village suggests that China has extended a broader campaign to fortify its southern flanks to include Bhutan, a Buddhist nation of 800,000 people that popularised the concept of “gross national happiness.”

As the construction was underway on that long-disputed border, China added a new claim this summer to nearly 300 square miles of territory in the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, a preserve on the other side of Bhutan from where the village was being built.

In pushing its boundaries, China appears to have brushed aside decades of quiet and ultimately fruitless talks to finalize the two countries’ border. A 25th round of talks this year was postponed because of the coronavirus.

“The Chinese obviously seem to be losing patience,” Tenzing Lamsang, editor of the newspaper The Bhutanese and president of the Media Association of Bhutan, wrote on Twitter.

The dispute stems from different interpretations of a treaty signed in 1890 by two now-defunct imperial powers, Britain as India’s colonial ruler and the Qing dynasty in China.

The new village is near the Doklam plateau, where the borders of China, India and Bhutan converge. The plateau was the site of a 73-day standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in 2017 that began over the construction of a road into Bhutanese territory. India, which is obliged to defend Bhutan under a long-standing security pact, pushed troops forward to halt the Chinese work.

Bhutan, which in recent years has felt squeezed between the two giants, poses no military threat to China. For China, control of the area would give its forces a strategic position near a narrow strip of land in India called the Siliguri Corridor. That area, which Indian military strategists also call the Chicken Neck, connects the bulk of India to its easternmost provinces bordering Bangladesh, Myanmar and China.

Lamsang noted that Bhutan has long had to defer to India’s security interests. In its repeated talks with the Chinese, Bhutan has so far been unwilling to make any territorial concessions along the western and central borders. “Given Bhutan’s refusal to concede in the talks or even agree to compromises by China we are now paying a price,” Lamsang wrote.

Neither the Bhutanese nor the Chinese foreign ministry responded to requests for comment.

Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper that often echoes a hawkish view among Chinese officials, ridiculed the claims that the newly built village was in Bhutan, blaming India for stoking tensions with China’s southern neighbours. A day later, the newspaper warned against “looming foreign forces backing the China-bashing campaign across the Himalayas.”

The exact location of the new village, called Pangda, emerged in a series of satellite images published recently by Maxar Technologies, a company based in Colorado. They showed that construction began late last year and was completed, it seems, not long before Oct. 1 — China’s National Day. China’s version of the border lies south of the village.

The images also showed extensive new road-building and the construction of what seem to be military storage bunkers, according to a Maxar spokesman, Stephen Wood. The bunkers are in undisputed Chinese territory, though, indicating that China has sought to build up its military presence along much of the Himalayan border area. The images of China’s new construction were earlier reported by NDTV, a broadcaster in India.

China has made no secret of the construction, as evidenced by several state media reports on the village. One recounted an inauguration ceremony Oct. 18 that was attended by senior officials from Shanghai, including Yu Shaoliang, deputy secretary of the city’s Communist Party committee.

In China, richer provinces often sponsor development projects in poorer regions, especially in Tibet and Xinjiang. China absorbed Tibet beginning in 1950, with the new communist government seeking to reassert sovereignty over the Tibetan people and territory that had been lost after the fall of the Qing dynasty. Although the Chinese called its annexation the “Peaceful Liberation of Tibet,” many Tibetans are unhappy with Chinese rule.

Fravel of MIT said that with its recent construction, China appeared to have backed away from potential compromises that it floated in earlier rounds of border talks with Bhutan, in which it offered to trade swathes of territory.

“Previous compromise ideas from the 1990s may no longer be on the table,” he said, “as China may be unwilling or unlikely to withdraw from territory where it has erected such infrastructure.”

Adventure

Coronavirus: Chinese explorers start Everest climb amid pandemic

By Navin Singh Khadka

A group of Chinese mountaineers has begun an expedition on Everest while the site is closed to foreign climbers because of coronavirus.

Only Chinese climbers are permitted this spring season because of the pandemic, operators told the BBC.

The highest peak of the world stands on the border of China and Nepal and can be climbed from both sides.

China has closed its side to foreign climbers while Nepal has cancelled all expeditions in response to Covid-19.

The disease first emerged in central China three months ago. Around 3,300 people have so far died in the country after becoming infected.

China says it has now all but stopped the spread of the disease and the authorities have started to allow some access to Wuhan, the city in Hubei province where the outbreak began.

The more than two dozen Chinese climbers tackling Mount Everest were expected to reach the advanced base camp at an altitude of 6,450 metres (four miles) on Friday, expedition operators in touch with the China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) said.

CTMA officials could not be reached for comment.

Mountaineering record-keepers say that if the climbers make it to the summit, it would be a very rare case of only Chinese climbers at the peak.

“In Spring 1960, only the Chinese reached the summit. The Indians tried, but failed,” said Richard Salisbury, with the Himalayan Database, an organisation that keeps records of all expeditions in the Himalayas.

“There were various Chinese recon, research and training climbs from 1958 through 1967 when nobody else was on the mountain, but no ascents by any of them.”

Western expedition operators said China did not allow them to climb this spring season due to fears over a new outbreak of the virus.

“It is reasonable that they do not want to take the risk to let people from all over the world, where the coronavirus crisis is in full swing, into Tibet to gather in base camp,” said Lukas Furtenbach, an Austrian climber and guide whose team was initially supposed to climb from the Chinese side.

“As long as there is no quick and reliable antibody testing available, it is a wise decision to minimise risk and only have their own people that they can take into quarantine before climbing.”

Some expedition teams, including Mr Furtenbach’s, were preparing to switch over to the Nepalese side but Nepal too cancelled all expedition permits.

The Chinese mountaineers will now be climbing up and down the mountain between camps to acclimatise themselves with the high altitude before making the final push for the summit. It will take them at least one month.

Climbers wait for the right weather window for the summit climb. Summiting usually happens before the end of May, when the south-west Indian Monsoon arrives in the region.

The Chinese side of Everest sees fewer climbers compared to the southern side in Nepal. Climbers can drive right up to the base camp on the Chinese side, whereas in Nepal it is a 10-day trek through the Khumbu valley.

“Even from the base camp, they ride yaks to reach the advance base camp,” says Ang Thsering Sherpa, a veteran mountaineer in Nepal.

“It’s a very different experience of climbing on the northern side, compared to the Nepalese side.”

In recent years, avalanches, fast melting glaciers, and other global warming-related changes are said to have made climbing more challenging

Navin Singh Khadka is Environment correspondent, BBC World Service.

Adventure

Nepali climbers scale Mt Aconcagua promoting Visit Nepal 2020

KATHMANDU: At least four Nepali climbers have successfully scaled the highest peak in South America expressing their commitment to make the ‘Visit Nepal-2020’ campaign a success.

“We reached the summit of Mount Aconcagua on January 4 carrying a banner of Visit Nepal-2020,” Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, team leader of the Seven Summit Expedition, told media.

 

Along with Tashi Lakpa, Karma Tenzing Sherpa, Halung Dorchi Sherpa, and Satish Man Pati stood atop the 6,962-metre peak where over 50 world climbers joined the team to promote the ‘Visit Nepal-2020’ campaign.

“This is the first time the world climbers joined Nepali team to celebrate Christmas, New Year and the Nepal’s national tourism campaign on the summit of the highest peak out of Asia,” Tashi Lakpa, who holds a world record of the youngest person to climb Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, shared. “We have also urged the world climbers to return to Nepal in 2020.”

With the successful ascent of Mount Aconcagua, Tashi Lakpa, on his mission to scale all seven highest peaks in all seven continents, completed his fifth mountain this winter. He has to climb two more peaks – Mount Vinson in Antarctica and Mount Carstenz pyramid in Australia – to achieve the feat. The Managing Director of Seven Summit Treks has already climbed Mt Everest, Denali, Elbrus and Kilimanjaro.

Adventure

Traffic jams making Everest deadly

The reward for climbers who ascend Mount Everest is a view like none other, an expansive vista of the Himalayas from the highest point on the planet. On Wednesday, those who made it to the top saw something else: Hundreds of other climbers.

The final leg of their journey to the summit was a traffic jam of trekkers enticed by good weather, the route clogged by a single-file march of 250 to 300 people along a precarious cliff that caused delays of about three hours.

Nirmal Purja, who photographed the scene, was among the climbers who scaled the peak on Wednesday, despite what he described as “heavy traffic”.

Everest graphic

The long, winding line to the peak added another element of risk to what is already one of the most dangerous mountains, raising the possibility of frostbite and oxygen depletion. At least two climbers died after having reached the summit on Wednesday, and their deaths may have been related to the delays.

Donald Cash, 54, an American, died after collapsing on the mountain following an unusually long summit, according to Pioneer Adventures, a Kathmandu-based organisation that leads expeditions on Everest.

Cash was traveling with Sherpa guides from Pioneer Adventures, the organisation said, and fainted from altitude sickness. He could not be revived by the Sherpas.

The other fatality, Anjali Kulkarni, 54, an Indian, collapsed while returning from the summit with her husband, according to Arun Treks and Expedition, which led the trip.

“Due to the huge traffic yesterday and the delay in being able to return back, she couldn’t maintain her energy,” said Phupden Sherpa, the tour group’s manager.

Sherpa, who recalled similar episodes in 2017 that resulted in climber deaths, said it took the group an additional three hours to return to camp, a wait that he believes contributed to her death. Several of the climbers with Kulkarni returned to their camp with frostbite and other injuries.

Nivesh Karki, the manager of Pioneer Adventures, attributed the congestion at the summit to good weather. The frequently changing conditions mean that there is often only a small window of time for climbing, so on Wednesday, more groups than usual chose to push ahead rather than wait and risk harsh weather. “It was such a clear day, everyone was rushing to the summit,” he said.

“Once the weather is bad, no one can summit. So in good weather, everyone will try to go for the summit.”

Karki said the crowding on the mountain increased the peril for all climbers, even under normal circumstances. Two climbers are believed to have died on Everest last week: An Indian man was found dead in his tent and an Irishman went missing after a fall.

“This is a huge problem because the route is already dangerous, and there is always risk,” he said. “And a lot of traffic makes the journey quite difficult.”

But despite the risks, Everest has grown increasingly crowded. In 2018, a record number of climbers made it to the summit, according to figures from Alan Arnette, who chronicles the journeys of climbers on the mountain on his blog. 

Three Indian climbers have died on Nepal’s Mount Everest this week, bringing the death toll this season on the world’s highest peak to six.

Nihal Bagwan, an Indian climber who was part of a two-member expedition, died at camp four after descending from the summit late on Thursday, expedition organiser Babu Sherpa said on Friday.

“He reached the summit at 8am [02:15 GMT], but lost his energy while descending. So four Sherpa guides brought him back to the lower camp, where he died inside the tent,” Babu told media

Kalpana Das, a 53-year-old woman from India, who was part of a three-nation women’s expedition team, also died on Thursday, said Meera Acharya, an official at the department of tourism.

Anjali Kulkarni, 53, who was returning from the summit of Everest with her husband Sharad Kulkarni, died during her descent on Wednesday, according to Acharya.

Earlier this month, a US climber and an Indian mountaineer had died on their descent from Everest. An Irish climber who went missing is presumed dead on the mountain.

Babu, the managing director of Peak Promotion, said overcrowding had congested the route from camp 4 to the top.

“There were only short weather windows and everyone was trying to climb at once,” he said.