Global warming: Nepali Cabinet to meet on Everest

Jun 8, 2011

KATMANDU, Nepal — Nepal's Cabinet will hold a meeting on Mount Everest to highlight the threat from global warming, which is causing glaciers to melt in the Himalayas, an official said Monday.

The Cabinet will meet at the Everest base camp later this month, just ahead of an international climate change conference next month in Copenhagen, Denmark, Forest and Soil Conservation Minister Deepak Bohara said.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other Cabinet members will fly by plane to the 17,400-foot (5,300-meter) camp, the starting point for mountaineers attempting to climb the world's highest mountain.

Bohara said the meeting is an attempt to highlight the problem of melting glaciers in the Himalayas.

Glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, creating lakes whose walls could burst and flood villages below. Melting ice and snow also make the routes for mountaineers less stable and more difficult to follow.

Last month, members of the Maldives' government held an underwater Cabinet meeting to highlight the threat of global warming to the world's lowest-lying nation. President Mohammed Nasheed and 13 other government officials donned scuba diving suits and took their seats at a table on the ocean floor — 20 feet (six meters) under the surface of a lagoon.

Separately, a renowned Everest climber said he and mountaineering colleagues are planning to travel to Copenhagen next month to highlight the impact of climate change on the mountains.

Appa, a Nepalese Sherpa guide who has scaled the 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) peak 19 times, said climbers from all over the world will join the campaign.