Glaciers in Human Life

Abstract

The following three main concerns are addressed: (1) mountain peoples closely involved with glaciers, (2) down-country relations in Pakistan, China, India and Afghanistan, especially for water resources and risks, and (3) trans-boundary questions. In the latter, glacierised areas are involved in resource and geostrategic agendas, cultural and religious questions between countries and, not least, recurring and ongoing armed conflicts. There has been a tendency, beginning in the earliest modern work, to detach glaciers and glacial science from human contexts. Much has been investigated in both areas but their interrelations largely ignored, in particular how scientific glacier knowledge might engage with local knowledge for mutual benefit and to help address mountain land concerns. This bears on problems of some urgency in adapting to glacier and other climate-related changes. Lately, there has been the so-called ‘melting Himalayas’ issue, possible water crises due to loss of ice through global climate warming. It is a justifiable concern if, to date, not as evident in Karakoram glaciers or clear in its implications as for some other High Asian mountains. A brief survey is given of how mountain communities relate to and view the glaciers, mainly their agricultural and pastoral activities, and how modernization is affecting them. A case study of the Hopar villages, Barpu and Bualtar Glaciers, illustrates something of the complexities and the risks from glacier hazards. Interest in the water resources of the Indus and Yarkand Basin is overwhelmingly about supplies for the larger populations, cities and industries of the lowlands. The two rivers, specifically their main stems, may well have the world’s highest ratios of glacier meltwaters to numbers of inhabitants dependent on them. How glaciers relate to other cryosphere elements in terms of water resources, notably to snowfall and permafrost, remains largely unknown. How they relate to rapid socio-economic changes and large-scale water resource projects is even murkier. Many developments are necessarily poorly informed by knowledge of the glaciers because monitoring and research are so limited. Their present state and potentially adverse impacts of regional temperatures and other changes are equally uncertain. Meanwhile, the glacial waters of the Indus flow through four countries and, in the Yarkand Basin, China has issues with the indigenous cultures of Tibet and Xinjiang Province. Future prospects seem likely to depend more on relations between Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and China than on glacier change. The Indus Waters Treaty is generally considered a model for resolving differences and avoiding conflict over trans-boundary water resources. Nevertheless, for decades the upper Indus Basin has been subject to armed intervention and recurring wars. Relations between the countries concerned and the Treaty are under considerable stress these days. Of special concern is how conflict has blocked and disrupted scientific work on the glaciers and continues to do so, not least the much-needed improvements in monitoring the cryosphere and responding to glacier change.