Bhutan is among the regions in the world facing enormous challenges related to climate change and its impact on ecosystems and livelihoods. Therefore, there is an urgent need to enhance capacities in Bhutan to improve the understanding of ongoing and future changes of the cryosphere.
And to do so, a capacity building workshop on glaciology and disaster risk reduction in Bhutan began today.
Cryosphere is the frozen water part of the Earth system. And cryosphere is an important component due to its high sensitivity to climatic changes, its importance for fresh water provision and risk that emerge from a changing cryosphere. And therefore the workshop is aimed to teach how to cope and adapt to such related impacts in ecosystems and society in order to enable sustainable development of the country.
“I think at the moment Bhutan do not have such measures and mitigation in place. So the main purpose of having this workshop is to create awareness to the community. I believe most of the organisations, we do not have someone who has undergone studies in specific field,” Jigme Thinley, Organiser, said.
He said an important component of capacity development is preparation of the next generations for the challenges ahead by offering curricula at BSc and MSc level. He also said the College of Natural Resources is planning to start MSc programmes related to glaciology in Bhutan by 2021.
“In Bhutan, most of our mountains are covered by glaciers. And the main indicator, accepted internationally to determine climate change is glacier. So looking at the nature and importance of climate change, If we have incorporated specific programmes like glaciology, this could be very useful in the future,” He added.
A teaching team from Switzerland are training the participants on these issues and will also train on response of glaciers to climate change, international and regional monitoring programmes, glacier mass balance and introduction of permafrost during the week long workshop. Over twenty participants from relevant agencies are taking part in the workshop.
Today Bhutan has a total of 700 glaciers according to the 2018 Bhutan Glacier Inventory released by the National Center for Hydrology and Meteorology.
