Everest “memento” to Barak Obama to accentuate climate change
- Sunday, September 20, 2009, 17:50
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Everest
All head of states will attend a United Nation General Assembly meeting as well as hold talks on climate change in New York next week. The prime minister is heading to the US on Sunday evening to attend the UN General Assembly and the Climate Change Summit of the United Nations that will take place next week in New York.
Environmental group, World Wildlife Fund-Nepal said Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had promised to carry the “memento” and give it to Obama when world leaders meet in New York next week as “a symbol of the melting Himalayas in the wake of climate change”. The rock was brought from the 8,850 metre (29,035 feet) Mount Everest by Apa Sherpa, who climbed the mountain and hit the record of climbing it 19th time this May. While addressing the UN General Assembly, Nepal will inform the international community about the country’s political situation and the ongoing peace process.
A World Wildlife Fund-Nepal statement said more than 200,000 youth had also signed a petition to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanding action on global warming ahead of crucial climate talks in Copenhagen. Negotiations on an accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol are scheduled to conclude at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital in December.
The youngest republic nation, Nepal is a mountainous country where eight of the world’s 14 tallest peaks including Mount Everest reside. Although Nepal is responsible for only 0.025 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is among the world’s lowest is doomed to be most vulnerable to climate change more than it deserves.
Environmental campaigners refer to the Himalayas as the “Third Pole” and say the melting glaciers are the biggest potential contributors to rising sea levels after the North and South Poles.
The high snow clad mountains including Mount Everest is the point of attraction for the tourists all over the world. Markedly, Nepal collects most of its revenue via tourism activities like expeditions, peak climbing, trekking, white water rafting, cannoning, kayaking, etc., for which the only platform are the snow-covered Himalayas that are jeopardized due to global warming. Activities of developed countries are more responsible than developing and poor countries for climate change and global warming.
