Glaciers at many UNESCO World Heritage sites, including Yellowstone National Park and Kilimanjaro National Park, are likely to disappear by 2050, the United Nations agency warned on Thursday, urging leaders to act quickly to save what’s left. The warning followed a study of 18,600 glaciers at 50 World Heritage sites – covering about 66,000 square kilometers (25,000 sq mi) – which found that glaciers at a third of the sites were “doomed to extinction”.
The study “shows that these glaciers have been retreating at an accelerated rate since 2000 due to CO2 emissions, which are warming temperatures,” UNESCO said. The glaciers were losing 58 billion tons of ice every year, equivalent to the combined annual water consumption of France and Spain, and were responsible for nearly five percent of observed global sea-level rise, the agency explained. “Glaciers in a third of the 50 World Heritage Sites are doomed to disappear by 2050, regardless of efforts to limit warming,” UNESCO said. “But it is still possible to save the glaciers in the remaining two-thirds of the sites if the temperature rise does not exceed 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial times.” Countries have committed to keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – a target the world will not meet on current emissions trends.
“This report is a call to action,” UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said ahead of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, which begins on Monday. “Only a rapid reduction in our CO2 emission levels can save the glaciers and the exceptional biodiversity that depends on them. COP27 will have a vital role to play in finding solutions to this problem.” In Africa, glaciers are very likely to be removed from all World Heritage sites by 2050, including Kilimanjaro National Park and Mount Kenya, UNESCO has warned. In Europe, some glaciers in the Pyrenees and the Dolomites will probably disappear in three decades. The same was true for glaciers in Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks in the United States. Melting ice and snow is one of the 10 key threats to climate change, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in February.
