EarthSky spoke with water expert Mark Smith, who heads the Water Programme for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature – IUCN – the world’s oldest and largest network of environmental scientists and agencies.
Mark Smith: When we think of climate change impacts … mostly what people are talking about is drought and floods and storms, and sea level rise, and melting glaciers. And all those things have to do with water.
He talked about one example: According to a 2009 study, published in the proceedings of National Academies of Sciences, human-caused climate change is linked to the rapid melting of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers, and snow cap could disappear entirely in just a few decades. More than 2 million people depend on water from the Kilmanjaro’s glaciers. Dr. Smith spoke about an IUCN project to help people in northern Tanzania better manage their water.
Mark Smith: This is in the Pangani River Basin, which has Mount Kilamanjaro at its headwaters. So this is a very iconic place for climate change. But it’s also a very typical place for Africa, where people are struggling with water security. The big problem in the Pangani is that water is running out. And climate change is making this worse.
Smith said that the IUCN project works with the Tanzanian government and grass-roots leaders of farmers and fishers to figure out how to allocate shrinking water supplies – for the small-scale farmers who need irrigation water to hydropower for the capital city Dar es Salaam. Dr. Smith described at more length the IUCN project to help the people of Tanzania better manage their water from Mount Kilimanjaro.
Mark Smith: Part of the solutions that IUCN have been working on with the government there, with other partners locally, is to first figure out how much water we actually have, and then ways of allocating it. When we work on allocating water between uses, remember, ecosystems need water too. And that’s important to remember because ecosystems provide those services that people rely on for their livelihoods, for insuring that they can withstand impacts of climate change, like wetlands and groundwater recharge. So if we don’t allocate water to within that allocation system, then we lose those services.
Dr. Smith spoke more about the importance of ‘resilience,’ in dealing with climate change impacts such as disruption to water supplies.
Mark Smith: ‘Resilience’ is a nice, friendly, English word that means we’re better at coping with problems. It also means we’re more adaptive, and work in systems that are more adaptive. Resilience comes from not just being reactive – there’s going to be a problem with drought, therefore let’s build a dam – but building around that some of the actions we need, such as making sure we have diversity in economy, in livelihood. So that when problems happen, we have alternatives. We have infrastructure that’s sustainable, dams hat work well and don’t cause so many problems downstream, for example, so that we can ensure that downstream ecosystems can be protected from the people who depend on those.
Hi, just a few observations about global warming, melting ice flows causing rise in our oceans, etc. Archimedes discovered that density and displacement are very real. The density and weight of floating ice packs is directly proportional to the amount of water that it displaces. How then can melting ice flows cause water levels to rise? Canada had over a mile thick of ice shield at one time and that has all disappeared. The oceans did not rise then. The glaciers of today for the most part are continuously fed and generated from mountainous areas that are cold enough to condense moisture and cause it to fall in the higher altitudes. Even Kilimanjaro will still have moisture from its peaks, even though that water might be some warmer, it will still be cause for condensing of moisture with altitude difference. Greenland was called this because it used to be green enough to allow growth of grapes to make wine. Now it is covered in a lot of ice. Volcanoes are 1500 kilometres along a shelf over the top of Canada into Russia. These are on the sea floor. Don’t you think they would cause some of the ice melt?
I’m very interested in a lot of what is told in today’s world and certainly not going to just take verbal sayings without some very specific backing. Thanks for all you do.
Donald K. Morrison wo2buck@sympatico.ca
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Frankville, Ontario
Canada K0E1H0
THe phrase: “climate change” is a cop out used because the climate stopped warming. It means absolutely nothing as the climate of earth is, and always has been, in a constant state of flux. None of the “international” groups exist to save the earth. They exist to destroy individual liberty, private property and therefore destroy capitalism and western civilization.
Be careful what you ask for, you might get it. Once capitalism is destroyed, the capital to build power plants and water treatment facilities will be gone. Then, you will get a chance to experience “the good old days”. That will include starvation, famine and death. If you are lucky, you will be killed early by the powers that be once you become one of the “useful idiots”. Check out the Bolshevik Revolution. Same game, different name.
Sorry but I have to call out a serious problem with this story as it attempts, without proper scientific basis, to hold out Kilimanjaro as the poster child for climate change. Numerous peer reviewed studies have concluded and it is now well accepted that global warming is not the reason for glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro.
The findings of prominent studies conclude the plains around Kilimanjaro have experienced decades of deforestation. Less trees = less evapotranspiration = less snow. Trees put moisture into the air via evapotranspiration where the upslope winds precipitate it as snow in the freezing air atop the mountain.
The temperatures on Kilimanjaro remain below freezing to this day. So the real problem is not that the glaciers are “melting” but rather there is less precipitation and increased sublimation because of decreased evapotranspiration. The retreat of Kilimanjaro glaciers underscores how much impact land use can have on local systems.
References:
Duane, W.J., Pepin, N.C., Losleben, M.L. and Hardy, D.R. 2008. General characteristics of temperature and humidity variability on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 40: 323-334.
Fairman, J. G.; Nair, U. S.; Christopher, S. A.; Mark, B. G.; Plummer, M. A. Impact of Upwind Land Cover Change on Mount Kilimanjaro. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #C23A-0599
More if you need.