CNE Paper, 26 December 2018 Read original news here

A few days ago, at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, the agreement on the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the publication of the Katowice Climate Publicity, the research team of the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Li Dezhu Research Group and Gao Lianming Research Group wrote in the journal Science. We call on governments and the public to pay attention to the deteriorating ecological environment and its potential threats in the third pole region, and work together to protect the pure land of the last party on the planet.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its surrounding mountains are the regions with the largest ice reserves on the earth except the Antarctic and the Arctic, and are regarded as the “third pole” of the earth.

However, the crisis caused by global change and human activities is particularly prominent at the third pole. In recent decades, the average temperature increase of the third pole has been significantly higher than the global average. Numerous studies have confirmed that climate warming has caused dramatic changes in the environment of the third pole, including but not limited to increased precipitation, glacial retreat, snow reduction, lake shrinkage or expansion, permafrost ablation, grassland and wetland degradation, and even local Scale desertification, etc. At the same time, human activities such as overgrazing, deforestation, urban expansion, and infrastructure such as roads, dams, and power grids have caused profound changes in surface coverage in the region. These processes are intertwined and are gradually changing the biogeochemical cycle of the third pole, pushing the fragile ecosystems of the region to the edge of recession and possibly eventually disintegrating.

The article pointed out that with the United States’ withdrawal from the climate change “Paris Agreement” and the continuous upgrading of infrastructure construction in the region, the ecological crisis of the third pole will be worsened, which may lead to irreparable and catastrophic consequences in the region and the world.

In response to the ecological crisis of the third pole, the article proposes that all countries in the world need to strictly abide by the “Paris Agreement”, that is, before the industrial revolution, the global average temperature increase in this century is controlled within 2 °C, and efforts are limited to 1.5 °C. Second, at the regional level, the third-polar countries (including Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Tajikistan) need to shelve geopolitical differences and work together to adjust to the upcoming policy. Ecological crisis. This urgently requires the establishment of a fast and effective coordination and communication channel between countries, and the conclusion of a third-pole cross-border biodiversity conservation cooperation agreement or treaty.

According to the Journal of Chinese Academy of Sciences