Please see below for excellent, hi-resolution, royalty-free assets on the climate crisis in the Hindu Kush Himalayas – for COP28 coverage today (Wednesday), tied to the Global Tipping Points Report. 
 
The report finds global warming is on course to breach 1.5C, with at least five Earth system tipping points likely to be triggered, including in the cryosphere, which encompasses ice, snow, mountain glaciers, and permafrost.
 
Please find a full list of media assets, details and links at the bottom of this email.
 
This follows a high-level roundtable with heads of states of mountain countries on 2 December,  where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned about glacier melt in the Himalayas. 
 
Guterres said: “It is deeply shocking to learn how fast the Himalayan glaciers are melting. The glacier loss here means swollen lakes and rivers flooding. Sweeping away entire villages. It means rising seas, threatening communities around the world. The melting is accelerating. Unless we change course, we will unleash catastrophe.”
 
Guterres recently visited the Himalayas, where the cascading impacts of climate change threaten a quarter of the world’s population. A report in June by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) found the region's glaciers are melting 65 per cent faster in the last decade than in the previous one, and that glaciers in the region could lose up to 80% of their current volume by the end of the century.
 
Commenting on the Global Tipping Points Report, Izabella Koziell, Deputy Director General of ICIMOD said: “The glaciers in the mountains of Asia have some of the earliest tipping points of the entire Earth system, and families in some of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world – Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan — are already feeling the devastating consequences: in rising landslides and floods, erratic rain and snowfall, extreme rain, droughts, and heatwaves. This report makes it really clear that it is incumbent on everyone with power, influence and resources at this moment to get behind the solutions and take every available action to ditch dirty fossil energy. There is not a moment to lose.”
 
Pam Pearson, Director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), said: “The recently published State of the Cryosphere 2023 Report shows that once we consider the global and irreversible impacts from cryosphere tipping points on the entire planet, remaining within 1.5°C is the only way to prevent an accelerating chain of catastrophic events, economic loss, and political instability. The ice will keep melting until CO2 levels not only stop rising but actually come down. The solutions are there. Global leaders at COP28 must agree on a path to phase out fossil fuels, immediate and deep emissions cuts and clear financing for climate action, adaptation and loss and damage.”
 
Please let me know if you have any questions about the assets below, and if you would like to speak to one of ICIMOD or ICCI’s spokespeople. 
 
Best regards,
Annie Dare