From Africa to Nepal

From Africa to Nepal: My first week as Executive Director of TGT

By Ruby Glasspool (UK Executive Director)

I’ve never been to Nepal, but that is about to change. Last week I took my first tentative steps as the new executive director for The Glacier Trust. When I read up about the charity and its work, I knew I had a part to play in its future, and was over the moon to be selected as the next strategic leader. Since starting last week, it has become clear that I have a pair of solid, well-trodden trekking boots to follow in Morgan Phillips. I humbly leave behind my role as chief executive officer of Bread and Water for Africa and gratefully take the reins for TGT.

First handing over meeting at Wiper and True brewery in Bristol

During my first week or two, I immersed myself deeply into the heart and culture of Nepal through content and books - something I love to do! It is hugely important to me to work ‘with’ people, side by side, and honour and respect cultural differences. I am no dictator, I prefer to work harmoniously with every individual and group and make room for our nuanced differences. Through my humanitarian work, I value providing a ‘hand up’ not a ‘hand out’, and I passionately believe that if people are empowered, and respected for their uniqueness and talents, we can achieve far more than if we turn up with food trucks and hierarchy. It was strong evidence of all these values, and more, that drew me to TGT.

Personally, I have travelled the world and seen first hand the suffering caused by cultural, political and economic ‘differences’. It sounds cliché to say that ‘there is enough food and supplies for everyone on this planet’ - but it’s not just an ideal - it is an immediate reality that can be achieved if we radically change our inherent, habitual attitudes. Humanitarian aid, especially since the glorious years of Band Aid, has grown into a movement that perpetuates the idea that ‘some poor people need help from us’, and created dependency and status hierarchy like never before. It’s time to change that, and nurture smaller charities who are leading the way in undoing that dependency and empowering our fellow, equal, humans.

This is why I am so proud to have stepped into this role with TGT, a small charity who is most definitely leading the way in a new approach to aid. TGT are poised on the brink of a time where big change can happen globally, and it will be the TGT’s of the world that know exactly how to clean up the mess left behind by so many well intentioned do-gooders. My values in my work are self-empowerment, sustainability, fairness, equality and kindness; and TGT embody all of these principles.

I am still taking one small step at a time as I learn the ropes of this wonderful role, and I am looking forward to getting to know all our supporters, patrons, partners and advocates who have made all this possible. I hope I can do justice to the legacy that all of these people, including you dear reader, have made through the work of the Trust.

I am planning a long trip to our projects in Nepal this year, so that my work going forward is connected not just through my mind, but through my heart too. I look forward to sharing the findings of that trip with you all, and in the meantime - thank you for accepting me so graciously into the TGT family.

More important things

More important things

by Richard Allen in Kathmandu

It is one more stark example of the differences of the haves and have nots. The British press of all shades have been endlessly headlining, for months and months, the possibilities of when the British public will be permitted to go on holiday and where to, and the necessity for testing, quarantine, lock-ins on their return from an overseas holiday.  One of the worst examples of the British fake news spreaders recently headlined the fact that the Nepali variant (currently unproven and non-existent) is a threat to their holidays – and, oh horrors, Portugal has just moved from green to amber.

To me, a Brit living and working in Nepal, which is, as most will know, having a very tough time with COVID, this focus on when and where we can go on holiday, is astonishing. In comparison with so many countries in the world, the UK is so so comfortable, so much of that comfort still deriving from the long gone hundreds of years during which Britannia once ‘ruled the waves’.

Here in Nepal, the great majority of the population don’t have the resources or time to go on holiday – the great majority are farmers who have crops and animals to care for every day of the year. Nepal is not alone, we read too much of the wars and troubles in too many countries to list here. 

And now the Covid virus. But when nations of the world need to come together, realise at a fundamental level that we are all in this together, that it is not going away, and that the only way we can control the spread is to cooperate, scrap ideas of borders, and separateness……the worst elements of the British press nominate countries to blame and invent non-existent variants.

Added to the decision to reduce the overseas aid budget by £4 billion, which led to our NGO having to apologize to our Nepali partners who had wasted well over 100 hours on preparing a proposal for UK Aid for an enlightened agroforestry programme down the hills from Everest, the Brits in Nepal have now been further embarrassed by the naming and shaming of this wonderful country on the front pages of our little island newspapers.

Is there no empathy and compassion left? Is it all about separation nowadays? Are we all existing in our own little spaces, territories, countries within our own little blinkered support groups? No, it is not all about this, there are hundreds of examples of countries, peoples, trans national groups working together for the betterment of humanity, the environment and the world – but this Covid virus has certainly shone a light on the failure of world and national leadership to put politics aside and be able to work together in the time of a worldwide crisis. And it is not as if we do not have a few other crises bubbling up across the world!

It appears as if most world leaders are not plugged into the spirit of humanity. I saw the G7 described as the “leading” nations, then the “advanced” nations – what does the G stand for…… global – really?....... they are certainly advanced in galling, garrulous, gold-digging, greed, grating….. and refusing freedom from patents…..after all, we could be making our own vaccinations in Nepal.

If the seven of them, or 20 of them, whatever, need an example of focused energy, discipline and compassion, in relation to this Covid pandemic, please take a look at Bhutan and New Zealand.

Only two things can control this virus – a permanent lockdown, or vaccinating > 75% of the world population – the former is unrealistic, and we are very far from the latter.

Vaccines please, leaders – scientists in many different countries have done such an amazing job in developing these vaccines, please don’t screw it up with hoarding, allowing vaccines to expire, self-serving press conferences, unnecessary expenditure on flat and press room renovations - please leave your competitive personalities at the Olympics and on the football fields.  In fact, come to think of it, so much money is wasted on the never ending arms race, wars, conflicts, controlling of populations…., that maybe a short holiday for the wealthy is the least of our worries.  But, my God, it is annoying to see it on the front pages.

Many of us have seen friends, acquaintances, and people we know suffer or die during this pandemic. Can we not leave behind the baggage of fear, envy and resentment, and put judgements aside for this year? Can we instead be gentle and patient, and live the words “for the common good”, rather than just speak them.

Well, I am sending this over to the UK now, and I will get back to lockdown, Kathmandu style – wondering where the next bucks are coming from (haven’t earned a bean since June last year), but its fasting week with my daughter, and I’ll continue with my meditation course, reading and gardening….. sure, I would love to go on holiday, and I am one of the lucky ones that can afford it, but right now, dear Brits, dear editors, dear leaders, there are more important things.

Debris and GLOFs

Guest post: How debris cover is altering glaciers in the Everest region

by Dr David Rounce, University of Alaska Fairbanks

If you’ve ever traveled to Everest Base Camp or seen photos of glaciers in the Everest region, you’ll notice that the lower regions of these glaciers don’t look like your typical clean ice glacier. Instead, they are covered with debris. In fact, Everest Base Camp (Figure 1), located at 5,360 metres above sea level, is set up each year on top of the debris-covered portion of the Khumbu Glacier. 

Figure 1. David Rounce taking a quick break from his fieldwork in 2014 to visit Everest Base Camp in the Nepal Himalaya.

The glaciers in this region are primarily avalanche-fed debris-covered glaciers meaning that avalanches and rockfalls from the headwalls surrounding the upper portion of the glacier cause debris to be deposited on the glacier surface. This debris is then rafted down-glacier as the glacier flows over time causing the debris to accumulate at the terminus of the glacier. This explains why the debris is the thickest at the end of the glacier and thinner further up glacier. 

This debris cover fundamentally alters how these glaciers will respond to climate change. A thick layer of debris (greater than a couple centimeters) will insulate the underlying ice and reduce glacier melt, while a thin layer of debris (less than a few centimeters) will absorb more radiation and can actually increase the melt. While this relationship between debris thickness and glacier melt is well known, quantifying the debris thickness over an entire glacier has remained a challenge – until now. 

Our recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface has developed a new method for estimating the debris thickness for three glaciers in the Everest region of Nepal. Our method uses pairs of high-resolution digital elevation models to estimate how much the glacier is melting, and then uses the well-known relationship between debris thickness and glacier melt to estimate the debris thickness. We found that on the tongues of Khumbu Glacier and Ngozumpa Glacier, one of the largest debris-covered glaciers in the Himalaya, the debris thickness was around two metres thick! These estimates agreed quite well with previous measurements and were the first time that debris thickness estimates had been validated on the glacier scale. 

Figure 2. The debris on this portion of Imja-Lhotse Shar Glacier commonly exceeded one metre.  Here, an automatic weather station is being installed during a field expedition in April 2017 to better understand debris-covered glacier melt (credit: Chilton Tippin).

The thick debris on these glaciers (Figure 2) has important implications for how these glaciers will respond to climate change. Specifically, the debris thickness tends to be the thickest at the bottom of the glacier and become thinner further up glacier. 

How debris cover affects pond formation

Since the glacier melts more beneath thin debris compared to thick debris, the glaciers can actually melt more up glacier than it does at the bottom of the glacier, which causes the slope of the glacier to flatten. These gentler slopes enable supraglacial ponds to develop, which has occurred on both Ngozumpa Glacier and Khumbu Glacier over the last couple of decades. 

The supraglacial ponds on Khumbu Glacier (Figure 3) have already begun to impact one of the popular trekking routes, Kongma La Pass trail, with researchers from the University of Leeds projecting that this trail across the Khumbu Glacier will likely be impassable by 2020.

Figure 3. Supraglacial pond and ice cliff on Khumbu Glacier (credit: Owen King).

These supraglacial ponds also signal that the glaciers are storing more water on their surface and in their subsurface via englacial conduits as well. This stored water has the potential to be suddenly released causing a glacier outburst flood*. This happened at Lhotse Glacier, another glacier located in the Everest region, in June 2016, which was caught on video by Elizabeth Byers. 

Glacier outburst flood from Lhotse Glacier in June 2016 was captured on video by Elizabeth Byers.

While it is difficult to determine when and how frequently these outburst floods occur, the development of these supraglacial ponds is certainly important to monitor, they may eventually coalesce and develop into a large glacial lake. 

These glacial lakes can store a tremendous amount of water and can become a hazard for downstream communities. Imja Lake is an excellent example of a debris-covered glacier that developed from a few small ponds in the 1950s into one of the largest glacial lakes in Nepal today (Figure 4). In 2016, the outlet of Imja Lake was lowered by three metres to reduce the hazard associated with a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF).

Figure 4. Repeat photographs of Imja Lake from 1956 when the lake did not exist (credit: Fritz Müller) to 2007 where the lake has become one of the fastest growing lakes in Nepal (credit: Alton Byers).

A recent study in Nature estimated that roughly 18% of the total volume of ice in High Mountain Asia is beneath debris-covered glaciers. Another study in the Everest region estimated the debris-covered area is as high as 32% and is increasing as these glaciers continue to melt. Therefore, if we want to truly understand how these debris-covered glaciers and their potential hazards may evolve in the future, we first need to understand how the debris thickness varies on these glaciers. Our study is hopefully a good start.

Dr. David Rounce can be contacted via: https://davidrounce.weebly.com/contact.html

*Glacier Outburst Floods are slightly different to the more famous Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs).