Eco Everest Expedition 2008 launched

The 11-member climbing team of the Eco Everest Expedition 2008 met at Everest Base Camp Friday to mark the start of their climb with a traditional Buddhist religious ceremony.

Dr Schild, Director General of ICIMOD, handed over the ICIMOD Silver Jubilee flag to Dawa Steven Sherpa, the leader of the climbing team, to take to the top of the world.

In a message issued just before their assent to the world's tallest peak to draw global attention to the threats of climate change to the Himalayas, the expedition team said, "Climate change is affecting people around the globe, and this is especially evident at the top of the world, around Mount Everest and other great peaks of the Himalayas." They further said that glaciers are shrinking leaving behind glacial lakes with massive amounts of water threatening people and land downstream, adding that the loss of ice and snow will also herald water problems for the 1.45 billion people living in the great water basins of the Himalayan Rivers.

A premier of a photo exhibition, 50 Years of Change - Glaciers, Landscapes, People and Resilience in the Mount Everest Region, Nepal is also taking place at Base Camp at the same time. The exhibition includes a unique collection of repeat panoramas of mountains, valleys and glaciers taken in the 1950s, and retaken in the past few years. These photographs demonstrate the changes in the climatic, cultural and physical landscape of the Khumbu over the past half century. The exhibition will be unveiled at Everest Base Camp and will then tour several European countries.

The Eco Everest expedition is the brainchild of Dawa Steven Sherpa of Asian Trekking, after he got shocked by his own experience of ice collapse in the Khumbu ice fall, and the realisation of the impacts of climate change. Dawa Steven and Asian Trekking have joined with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development - ICIMOD - and the United Nations Environment Programme - UNEP - in a plan to use the climb to draw the world's attention to the problems resulting from climate change and the need to help the people of the region, and the world. nepalnews.com ag Apr 18 08