Steep crisis

UNESCO asked to list Mount Everest as endangered

 
By Rajesh Ghimire
Published: Saturday 15 January 2005

the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (unesco) has been asked to include Nepal's Sagarmatha (Everest) National Park (snp), along with two other natural sites in Belize and Peru, in its Endangered World Heritage list due to the effect of global warming on them. Temba Tsheri Sherpa, the youngest person to climb Mount Everest, and Pemba Dorjee Sherpa, Everest's fastest climber, traveled to unesco's headquarter in Paris with a bulk of melting ice, 1 metre (m) x 1.5 m in size, to submit the request regarding the snp . "That was the symbol of the snow melting in our mountains," says Ram Charitra Sah, a scientist working with Pro-Public, the main petitioner. Pro-Public is a public interest forum.

The other two petitions were submitted to the unesco World Heritage Committee by the Belize Institute of Environmental Law and Policy and Foro Ecologico del Peru to protect the Belize Barrier-Reef Reserve System and the Huascaran National Park in the Peruvian Andes, respectively. This is the first time the committee has been asked to include sites in the endangered list because of climate change. The petitions also call for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The snp petition demands the safety of locals, early warning systems for glacial lake outburst floods (glof) and the creation of a glof disaster fund.

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