The World Wide Fund for Nature admitted that it was wrong in claiming in a 2005 report that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035. Chetan Chauhan reports. See graphics| Full Coverage
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on Monday admitted that it was wrong in claiming in a 2005 report that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.
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The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had sent the alarm bells ringing when it picked up the report without a scientific review and said the Himalayan glaciers were on the brink. Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh had though termed the "findings" as alarmist.
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IPCC chief R.K. Pachauri tried to wash his hands off the controversy, saying he had “absolutely no responsibility”. “It’s the work of independent authors... they’re responsible.”
Syed Iqbal Husnain’s report — the basis of the WWF claim — was published in 1999 when he was with Jawaharlal Nehru University, Pachauri said on Monday. Husnain is now a distinguished fellow with The Energy and Resources Institute, a body headed by the IPCC chief.
The issue was being reviewed and a statement would be issued this week, he said. The claim would be deleted from the IPCC report, a UN official told HT on condition of anonymity. The IPCC’s claim was based on a WWF study, Retreating Glaciers, in India, China and Nepal.
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“It was an error on our part,” said Sirish Sinha, head of climate division, WWF-India. “We took the data presented by Husnain to New Scientist and Down to Earth and failed to verify it…”
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“It was an error on our part,” said Sirish Sinha, head of climate division, WWF-India. “We took the data presented by Husnain to New Scientist and Down to Earth and failed to verify it…”
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Husnain, who led an International Commission on Snow and Ice’s study on the Himalayan glaciers, made a presentation at the Centre for Science and Environment, which brings out Down to Earth, in Feb 1999 and talked about the 2035 ‘meltdown’.
“We published what Hasnain told us,” Sunita Narian, magazine’s editor, told HT. “… It was a news report."
New Scientist spoke to Husnain about his claims in Down to Earth. A year later, when it found that the claims were not mentioned in the snow and ice commission’s paper on Himalayan glaciers, it spoke to Husnain again. It was then he admitted that the 2035 claim was speculative. Husnain, unavailable for comments since Sunday, however, failed to make public his wrong assertion.
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“Glaciers will not disappear by 2035. Our limited study of 10 years shows 15-20 metres recession — not considered alarming,” said glaciologist D.P. Dhobal of Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun.
Many were receding at a much slower rate of 5-7 metres per year and some weren’t receding at all, he said.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
