In his video address to the participants of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in September 2021, Imomali Rahmon, the President of Tajikistan touched on the problem of the melting of glaciers. He said that climate change and global warming exacerbated melting of more than 1,000 glaciers out of the 13,000 glaciers. The Fedchenko glacier alone has shrunk by 11 square kilometers in recent decades.
"Currently, about 60% of the water resources in Central Asia are taken from Tajikistan's glaciers," Rahmon said.
According to a new UNESCO report, glaciers in the Western Tien-Shan - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan - have shrunk by 27% over the past 20 years. By 2050, a third of the 50 World Heritage sites are predicted to be deglaciated. They are currently losing 58 billion tons of ice each year, which is equivalent to the combined annual water consumption of France and Spain. Their melting will cause the global sea level to rise by almost 5 percent.
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