The Everest Range, Nepal

In the Himalayan mountain range, Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth is 8.848 m high. Sagarmatha, which means “he whose head touches the sky” in Nepali, or Chomolongma, “the world’s Goddess-Mother” in Tibetan, is also named after the British colonel George Everest who was asked to draw a map of India in 1852. But it was only on May 29 1953 that the New Zealander Edmund Hilary and the Nepalese Sherpa Norgay Tensing first walked on the “roof of the world”. The Himalayan Mountains are seen as invincible and unchanging and yet, they are in full environmental mutation. The region’s increase in temperature (+ 1 °C since 1970) has led to the widespread melting of glaciers. Lakes high up in the mountains are therefore filling up so fast that some of them could overflow or burst their banks, endangering the lives of millions of people in the valley. Three quarters of Himalayan glaciers are decreasing - like all the Earth’s alpine glaciers. The consequences would be serious as mountain glaciers provide almost a sixth part of the world’s population with water. Glaciers act as storage reservoirs that contribute to streamflow during periods of low flow.