Africa will lose its few remaining glaciers by 2050

Glaciers in a third of all World Heritage sites, including Africa’s last remaining glaciers, are “condemned to disappear by 2050”, regardless of efforts to limit temperature rise. 

Fifty of the World Heritage sites are home to these large slow-moving masses of ice, representing nearly 10% of the planet’s total glaciered area. These include the highest (next to Mount Everest), the longest (in Alaska) and the few glaciers in Africa.

A new study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature shows these glaciers have been retreating at an accelerated rate since 2000 because of carbon dioxide emissions that raise temperatures. 

“Projections indicate that, regardless of the applied climate scenario, glaciers in all

World Heritage sites outside the polar ice sheets with glaciered areas less than 10km² may almost completely disappear by 2050,” the study said. 

They include Africa’s glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori-Virunga mountains as well as those in the Dolomites in Italy, the Pyrénées–Mont Perdu spanning France and Spain and the in Yellowstone and Yosemite national park in the United States. 

If emissions are drastically cut to limit global warming to 1.5°C relative to pre-industrial levels, glaciers in two-thirds of World Heritage sites could be saved. 

“This report is a call to action,” Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s director general, said in a statement. “Only a rapid reduction in our CO2 emissions levels can save glaciers and the exceptional biodiversity that depends on them. COP27 will have a crucial role to help find solutions to this issue.”