Responses to recent prompting
Jack Ives
1. jökulhlaup: at the risk of over-enlarging a small point! The word
is traditional Icelandic of many centuries ago. While I do not pretend
to any proficiency in the language, I have worked with Icelandic
farmers whose ancestors first experienced the wrath of j's for over
50 years. To them, floods that derive from glaciers are jökulhlaup.
Thorarinsson, the original scientific authority, rather than farmer
(who incidentally often were competent natural scientists, as I am sure
is the case for Sherpas and many other mountain people) differentiated
between "vulcanogen j" and "glaciogen j".
In my opening address I made a necessary distinction between floods
deriving from water within, upon, under, and dammed by glaciers and
those caused by the breach of end moraines that acted as dams holding
up melt-water. In regions such as the Himalaya, where the lower tracts
of glaciers are often buried by surface moraine for several km, it will
be difficult to separate "pro-glacial/moraine-dammed lakes" from
en-, sub-, and supra-glacial lakes. Imja Lake certainly began as a
series of small supra-glacial lakes; possibly Tsho Rolpa likewise? And
during lake development, the supra- variety may merge into the
moraine-dammed variety.
The first actual precise measurement of a glacier "leap", to the
best of my knowledge, was made by Dr. Matthew Roberts on
Skeidararjokull in Iceland (Roberts, pers. comm. April, 2005).
2. Dr. Vic Galay and I , and colleagues in WECS (HMG) may have been the
first in Nepal to raise concern in the context of Dig Tsho and Imja
Lake. Neither the government nor ICIMOD, despite the latter's
publication of Occnl. Paper No. 5 (Ives, 1986) took up the problem
(opportunity in the case of ICIMOD). I would like to hear from Dipak
Gyawali on this point.
3. I have nothing to say here except to endorse Kumar's comment on
the failure to achieve any effective collaboration.
4. nil
5. Doomsday scenarios! I applaud John Reynolds's "exposure" of
the New Scientist/Fred Pearce so outrageously misquoting him re
"hundreds of millions". However, while it may be argued that
exaggeration/over-dramatization may be necessary to catch the attention
of people/decision makers, it can certainly do a lot of harm. An
intelligent readership will also learn to disbelieve most things that
come into print. The case of Lake Sarez (slightly off-course re the
presence e-conference) is a good example. Rather than repeat this
story, unless someone would like the full account, I will merely
stipulate that it is to be found in Himalayan Perceptions.
6. nil
7. My recollection of decisions relating to Arun III is that it was
probably the new President of the World Bank who personally killed the
project (again, consult Gyawali). At the 1995 Paris consultancy I think
we were all in agreement that threat of glacial lake outburst flood was
not sufficiently serious to warrant any decision to delay or cancel
construction. Had Arun III been completed any possible disaster would
likely be of an environmental and economic nature.
8. covered under 5 above.
9. The point brought out by Reynolds is most relevant. The local people
can also be victims of such wild reporting. Our concern over reaction
to the so-called Lake Sarez threat in Tajikistan was that a military
force could conceivably be used to ensure forced and unnecessary
evacuation of some 30 villages. In this instance we had the advantage
of access to the President of T and, at least in this instance, he
proved to be a man of honour, despite his disappointment at the
potential loss of large sums in foreign/UN aid to help avert the until
then assumed catastrophe.
10. ICIMOD's list of dangerous, or all, glacial lakes, has been used
to aid over-dramatization. This has become a noticeable element in UNEP
politics. Nevertheless, I suspect much of the difficulty lies with
ICIMOD's historic reluctance to submit to vigorous "outside"
critical review and to continue a policy of "in-house" publication.
But I suspect that Reynolds and Ives have access to "in-house"
information that would be indelicate to introduce here.
11. Reynolds and colleagues have made a superb contribution in this
area.
12. Agreed, but either the political will is lacking, or else other
serious problems are providing a smoke screen.
13. Should we wait for another large disaster? Why not try to attract
more attention to this issue via the current e-conference?
14. In terms of early warning using remote sensing technology for Tsho
Rolpa, this is certainly available. To the best of my knowledge, a
complex warning system was set up after our review of Lake Sarez in
1999. Can we get a description of how this was done from Dr. Jörg
Hanisch, who was with me on that memorable occasion? Equally important
- the locals in Rolwaling should be asked to record their experience.
This would fit in with Seth's efforts for development of effective
aid to the area, aid that would be guided primarily by the people on
the spot.
Jack D. Ives:
e-mail: jack...@pigeon.carleton.ca, ives...@gmail.com