Earth Equity News

Continued Fighting on Melting Glacier above Kashmir Presents 'Colossal' Threat. By Bronwyn Curran, Abu Dhabi National, September 21, 2008. "India and Pakistan's 24-year battle for the Siachen Glacier, [the planet's second longest glacier outside the polar regions,] along the disputed border above Kashmir... is retreating at an alarming 110 metres a year [due to human activity, according to Arshad H. Abbasi, a hydrologist who has conducted studies there for the Worldwide Fund for Nature and for Pakistan's meteorological department]. It is named after the wild roses that grow in valleys below, but these days is better known as the world's highest -- and most senseless - battleground... Among human activities that have caused the retreat, Mr. Abbasi cited troop deployments, daily military flights... kerosene and diesel fumes, lorry movements and the dumping of chemical and human waste... In April 1984, India pitched a battalion on the Saltoro ridge lining the glacier's western flank. Pakistan followed suit, the two sides... are still up there in a demarcation stalemate, in temperatures that can fall to -50°C, eyeballing each other from freezing passes on the roof of the world. Exact troop numbers are... [estimated at] 6,000 to 25,000... 'Deployment of troops on Siachen is a huge burden on the economy of both countries. The result after 24 years is nothing but increasing poverty on both sides,' said Abid Suleri... of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, a [Pakistan] think tank... 'If Siachen and other glaciers are not preserved, the impacts on human health, water resources, and food production will be colossal,' he said, predicting increased deaths, disease and injury because of greater flooding and avalanches, higher sea levels and increased salinity of groundwater along the coast."