Kilimanjaro: Africa’s disappearing glaciers

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The mountains of East Africa are losing their glaciers. At 5,895 metres, Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain on the continent, but it has lost about 90% of its glacial ice in the past 100 years, and scientists believe the process is accelerating. They say climate change is the cause, and that some glaciers could disappear completely within the next few years. Rebecca Kesby has been speaking to Prof Clavery Tungaraza from Tanzania, and Dr Doug Hardy from the US, who was one of the first scientists to research Kilimanjaro. Simon Mtuy has climbed the mountain many times, and his family has farmed on its slopes for centuries. He tells Rebecca that, within his own life time, he has witnessed massive changes in the mountain and the climate.

(Photo: Giraffes, fog, Kilimanjaro and acacia trees in the morning. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Hello and welcome to this witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca
0:45.6	Kessby and today we head to the majestic glaciers on top of Mount Kilimanjaru in Tanzania.
0:51.8	It wasn't until the year 2000 that scientists began researching them in
0:56.2	earnest to recover the environmental history contained in the ancient ice.
1:01.6	But this is the story of how over the past 20 years climate change
1:06.0	has caused them to shrink in some cases almost to nothing.
1:11.5	Mount Kilimanjaro is changing. nothing. you can see fragmentation of the glacier all the time it's happening and remember
1:25.8	this is the glacier which has formed many many years ago it's not a question of
1:30.1	few hundred years it's a thousands of years, it's a thousands of years, so it's a really painful.
1:35.0	Professor Clavari Tangaraza is a Tanzanian scientist studying the environmental
1:41.5	changes on Kilimanjaro.
1:43.6	Sometimes it's like a helpless person.
1:48.3	You just fold your arms and you say,
1:50.4	what can you do?
1:51.6	Because now you are standing in the front of the glassier, huge
1:54.7	flows in water, then all of a sudden you see it collapsing, you see it melting, and
	...

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