Bonani Roychoudhury
“If steps are not taken to restore the Himalayan glaciers, the source of our perennial rivers, the next Maha Kumbh after 144 years may be held on sand as the sacred rivers of India may dry up,” said the Magsaysay award winner and education-reformist Sonam Wangchuk. Having campaigned globally for glacier preservation, he has been at the forefront in India highlighting the issue in the ‘Year of Glaciers’.
In fact in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Wangchuk exhorted that India should take the lead as the Himalayas have the third largest deposit of ice and snow on Earth after the Arctic and Antarctica, fetching it the name ‘Third Pole’. “India needs to take a lead in glacier preservation as we have the Himalayas, and our sacred rivers such as the Ganga and Yamuna come out of them,” Wangchuk said. Stating that he is an admirer of the environment initiatives taken by Prime Minister Modi, especially the ‘Mission LiFE’ campaign, Wangchuk urged PM Modi to set up a commission to assess the state of Himalayan glaciers.
‘Glacier Preservation’, the theme for World Water Day 2025, is highlighting the vital role glaciers play in preserving freshwater supplies worldwide and the pressing need for conservation efforts in the face of climate change. Further, the United Nations has declared 2025 as the ‘International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation’ while commemorating March 21st as the annual ‘World Day for Glaciers’. The aim is to raise global awareness about glaciers, snow, and ice in the climate system and the water-cycle and also mitigate the water availability challenge especially for agriculture both in the hills and the North Indian plains.
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