One Planet - Polar Summit: Melting ice takes center stage in Paris meeting
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00:00 bring in our environment editor Valerie De Kamp. Valerie, great to see you. Now, scientists
00:05 have described the current state of the world's poles and glaciers as extremely alarming.
00:10 What's the research telling us? Well, Antarctic sea ice is receding at an unprecedented rate,
00:17 Delano. You mentioned the poles warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Well, in
00:22 Antarctica in the last 50 years, temperatures have risen by four degrees Celsius with obvious
00:30 consequences for ice shelves. And it's a phenomenon that's already been well documented by scientists.
00:37 Essentially the loss of snow and ice means less incoming sunlight is reflected back into
00:44 space, essentially exacerbating warming. And we're having this kind of vicious circle of
00:50 more warming. According to scientists, areas of the world which are meant to be permanently
00:56 frozen ice caps, glaciers, sea ice cover 10% of the world's surface and changes in what
01:05 scientists call the cryosphere. Those areas permanently frozen are happening a loss faster
01:11 than it was initially predicted. Again, fueled by global warming. And just to give you a
01:18 recent example, Delano, Greenland's last remaining ice shelves have lost a third of their volume
01:26 in the last four decades. And there's now as a result, a risk, a major risk of rising
01:33 sea levels. And there's an important distinction to make when we talk about ice melting. And
01:39 those ice shelves essentially are massive chunks of ice floating over the surface of
01:45 the ocean. And when the fact that they're melting is not necessarily adding to this
01:50 issue of rising sea levels. On the other hand, they act as dams protecting glaciers on land
01:58 and slowing the loss of ice. And so essentially when you have those massive ice shelves weakening,
02:05 that in turn can lead to those glaciers letting more water and ice into the ocean. And so
02:12 according to the latest research, that could lead to rising sea levels of more than two
02:18 meters.
02:19 So you painted a pretty good picture of what this means for the environment, but how does
02:23 this impact our lives?
02:25 Right. And that's what's really crucial, Delano, is that whatever happens in polar regions
02:31 can potentially have huge consequences for people living in low lying islands like the
02:36 Marshall Islands. Whatever happens in glaciers in higher altitudes can have major consequences
02:42 for people living down below. So this, all of the changes that I described before, could
02:47 actually have an impact on people's livelihoods, more than two billion people on earth. And
02:54 so more than two people, two billion people, excuse me, depend on glaciers for drinking
03:00 water to water their crops. And so as glaciers melt, more water will become available. But
03:06 eventually those supplies of water will dwindle. The cryosphere, these areas of ice permanently
03:14 frozen, they also play a vital role in regulating patterns in the atmosphere that could lead
03:21 to extreme rainfall, flash floods, and eventually also lakes bursting out. And so remember Pakistan's
03:32 devastating floods.
03:34 Last year, a year before last.
03:35 Last year, exactly. We know that this was, you know, monsoon season supercharged by climate
03:40 change, but there's also growing evidence. There is evidence of another culprit, and
03:45 that is melting glaciers. Pakistan is home to more than 7,000 of them. And as they melt
03:52 faster, they add more water into rivers already swollen by more rainfall, Delano. So this
03:59 is all a very kind of interconnected picture of whatever happens in the polar regions and
04:05 in higher altitudes will have major consequences.
04:08 Valerie, thank you very much for that. Valerie, there with some not so bright news for the
04:12 future. Thank you for that.