The world's "Third Pole" is melting away. Here's how we can stop it from disappearing | Tshering Tobgay

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2019

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

The Hindu Kush Himalaya region is the world's third-largest repository of ice, after the North and South Poles -- and if current melting rates continue, one-third of its glaciers could be gone by the end of this century. What will happen if we let them melt away? Environmentalist and former Prime Minister of Bhutan Tshering Tobgay shares the latest from the "water towers of Asia," making an urgent call to create an intergovernmental agency to protect the glaciers -- and save the nearly two billion people downstream from catastrophic flooding that would destroy land and livelihoods.**

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features politician and environmentalist to sharing Tabgay, recorded live at TED Summit 2019.
0:09.0	On the 17th of October, 2009, President Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldives did something unusual.
0:20.0	He held his cabinet meeting underwater.
0:28.6	He literally took his minister, scuba diving as it were,
0:33.6	to warn the world that his country could drown unless we control global warming.
0:41.3	Now, I don't know whether he got his message across the world or not, but he certainly caught mine.
0:47.6	I saw a political stunt. You see, I'm a politician, and I noticed these things.
0:59.9	And let's be honest, the Maldives are distant islands from where I come from.
1:01.3	My country is Bhutan.
1:05.6	So I didn't lose any sleep over their impending fate.
1:14.9	Barely two months later, I saw another political stunt. This time, the prime minister of Nepal,
1:24.1	he held his cabinet meeting on Mount Everest. He took all his ministers all the way up to the base camp of Everest to warn the world that the Himalayan glaciers were melting.
1:30.3	Now, did that worry me? You bet it did. I live in the Himalayas.
1:35.3	But did I lose any sleep over his message?
1:40.3	No. I wasn't ready to let a political stunt interfere with my beauty sleep.
1:49.8	Now, fast forward 10 years.
1:53.2	In February this year, I saw this report.
1:58.8	Basically concludes that one third of the ice on the Hindukush Himalaya mountains
2:05.6	could melt by the end of the century. But that's only if we are able to contain global warming
2:14.6	to 1.5 degrees centigrade over pre-industrial levels. Otherwise, if we can't,
2:22.3	the glaciers would melt much more faster.
2:27.3	1.5 degrees Celsius. No way, I thought. Even the Paris Agreement's ambitious targets
	...

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