The Third Pole interviewed Professor Marcus Nüsser, Chair of the Geography Department at Heidelberg University, on his work, worries and hopes in the Himalayan region
By Omair Ahmad
The
Third Pole interviewed Professor Marcus Nüsser, Chair of the Geography
Department at Heidelberg University, on his work, worries and hopes in the
Himalayan region
Professor Marcus Nüsser has been working in the Himalayan region since
the late 1980s, and has travelled across the ridges from the western Hindu Kush
and Karakorum ranges to the eastern Himalayan. Since 2006 he has been the Chair
of the Geography Department at the South Asia Institute at Germany’s
prestigious Heidelberg University. He was in Delhi to deliver the keynote
address at a conference titled, “Global environmental change in the Himalayan
Region: Controversies, Impacts, Futures”. There was also an exhibition of the
photographs that Professor Nüsser has taken of the glaciers in the region. He
spoke to thethirdpole.net about his work, his concerns and his hopes for the
Himalayan region.
thethirdpole.net
(TTP): How did you become interested in the Himalayan region?
Professor Marcus
Nüsser (MN): I was always interested in mountains, but
initially my focus was much more on Africa. I went on a motorcycle trip through
North Africa, but when I had to travel to do my research in 1990 Algeria had
become unsafe. Ironically the Himalayan region, especially the Karakorum range
in Pakistan, was far safer, so I started my work there. In 1992 I started my
Ph.D. work, and travelled to Nanga Parbat in the northwestern Himalayas for
three months every year for five years.
TTP: But your
work initially did not focus on glaciers?
MN: No. My Ph.D. was on natural resource and patterns of land use by
human settlements in that area, but as you can see from my photographs, I
started taking an interest in the mountain geography even then. But it was in
the wake of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report
that speculated that the Himalayan glaciers might completely recede by 2035
that I started focussing on glaciers. While glacier retreat is a reality along
the Himalayan arc, it is highly differentiated across the region.
TTP: What does
this mean, in layman’s terms?
MN: Glacier retreat is a reality in general, but it is seen differently
in different places. In fact, in the western Karakorum ranges there are some
glaciers that are actually lengthening slightly. It depends on the geography.
Glaciers in higher reaches, above 5,500 metres, are less affected by the
warming that has taken place, while those glaciers nearer 3,000 metres are much
more affected. Crudely put, glaciers in the western areas are less affected
than glaciers in the eastern Himalayan region. But even this is too broad a
generalisation, as some glaciers are affected more than others despite being in
similar geographic areas.
Image Attribute: The Lirung glacier as it was 1949 [image by Oleg
Polunin]
TTP: You have
compared your pictures with old ones by Erwin Schneider and Oleg Polunin, who
were these people?
MN: Erwin Schneider was an Austrian mountaineer and cartographer. He
was part of the first German expedition, under Nazi rule, to Nanga Parbat in
the extreme northwestern part of the Himalayan region in 1934. In 1955 he
became the first person to make a detailed map of Mount Everest. Oleg Polunin
was a British botanist, and accompanied the first foreign expedition to Nepal
in 1949. They were both exemplary photographers, and I have tried to shoot some
pictures from the same views. I also did that with a huge number of photographs
from the expeditions to Nanga Parbat in the 1930s. The detailing using glass
plates by them is phenomenal and rivals the best equipment we have today.
Image Attribute: The Ngozumpa glacier as it was in 1955 [image by Erwin
Schneider]
Image Attribute: The Ngozumpa glacier in 2012 [image by Marcus Nusser]
TTP: We have a
renewed focus on the mountain region due to climate change and natural
disasters, such as glacial overflow floods, what are your concerns for the
region?
MN: The reality is that mountains have always been harsh environments to live
in. Mountain people have always had to cope with natural challenges. Of course
with glacial retreat the challenge of dealing with glacial lake outburst
floods, called GLOFs, increases, but maybe what concerns me more is the
increase of habitation and density of populations in certain hazard-prone
localities in the mountains. These were always risky places to live in, and
people had mechanisms to deal with the risk, but the large and dense
settlements are new to the mountains and these break up the old systems of
managing risk.
TTP: Are these
problems similar across the mountain regions? Are there lessons to be learned
from each other?
MN: Some adaptive techniques would be similar across the region. For example,
Chhewang Norphel’s “artificial glaciers” are an excellent form of
adaptation/mitigation. There are communities in the northern parts of Pakistan
that could replicate these models. Unfortunately meetings between Indian and Pakistani
experts are really difficult to arrange. India has many established centres of
study on these issues now; Pakistan has much fewer. There is no reason why one
cannot learn from the other. There is collaboration between China and Pakistan,
but almost exclusively on Chinese terms. There needs to be more balanced, open
exchange of information and knowledge.
TTP: And this
conference in Delhi is aimed at that?
MN: Yes. We have been cooperating with people like Professor R.B.
Singh, the head of the Department of Geography at the Delhi School of
Economics, Delhi University and Professor Harjit Singh at the Centre for the
Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, at Jawaharlal Nehru
University. At this conference we have more experts from India and Germany, and
it would be good if we could formalise this interaction for joint projects,
fieldwork and publications.
TTP: Is this the
hope you see in the region, larger regional cooperation?
MN: Partially, but you have to see that the problems are different in
different regions. In the Indus region there is a lower impact of the monsoon
and less vegetation, so the focus must be on the snow and ice. In the eastern
Himalayan region, we have to watch both the impact of the monsoons and the
greater retreat of glaciers. What really gives me hope is the increasingly
active participation of many villages in these efforts. They have the local
knowledge and they are the most affected. Local inhabitants hold the key to
dealing with climate change in the Himalayas. With access to information, often
provided by NGOs, these communities are becoming increasingly active, and that
is a good thing – one that we need to support.
This work is licensed by the Original Publisher – The Third Pole, under Creative
Commons'Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License.