India and China are in talks to monitor the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, a border region crucial to both countries' water supplies, Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh has said.

"We are talking to the Chinese about monitoring the Himalayan glaciers," Ramesh told the Financial Times.

Strategic Foresight Group proposes to examine the impact of water stress and climate change in Bangladesh, China, India and Nepal and explore collaborative solutions to prevent future crisis. This assumes significance in light of growing scarcity of water in India and China and future threats emanating from climate crisis for water scarcity and eco-systems in the entire region.

This Oxfam report presents grim picture of climate impact on farmers in Nepal. Says that the changing weather patterns has dramatically affected crop production and families who were growing food enough for six months were able to produce food enough for only a month last year.

THE protection of forests and rivers is at the heart of protecting the ecology of the Himalayas. But any long-term, sustainable effort must include the concerns of people living near forests and rivers.

Good water management is a much broader issue than supply of freshwater to thirsty populations. Ecosystems and biodiversity, agriculture and food security, land use and forestry, human health and sanitation, settlements and infrastructure, industry and energy all depend on good water management.

The booklet Mountain Biodiversity and Climate Change was developed from the contributions made at the International Mountain Biodiversity Conference in November 2008 in Kathmandu, Nepal, which brought together representatives from the eight countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region with representatives of global programmes with experience related to data collection and biodiversity conservation

M R Bhutiyani

Bhutan and India discussed the possibility of developing crops resistant to climate change, to keep agriculture apace with warmer global conditions.

Gaumukh is the snout of the Gangotri glacier located at an altitude of 4000 m in the Himalayas from where the snow and glacier-fed Bhagirathi River emerges.

Aarti Dhar

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Environment and Forests will bring out a white paper on the current state of scientific knowledge on the Himalayan glaciers.

It will establish an institutional mechanism to monitor the trends and variability of glaciers and study the impact of changes on the hydrological regime in the region.

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