A 7.9 MAGNITUDE earthquake that struck less than 50 miles from Kathmandu rocked Nepal last Saturday, leveling buildings and killing thousands of persons, according to media reports.

The quake, which has triggered an avalanche on Mt. Everest and tremors felt in India, Tibet, and Bangladesh, is the worst to hit the Himalayan nation in 80 years. It puts to the test Nepal’s current preparedness to handle such a disaster, and once more brings disaster risk reduction programmes and aid to the forefront of international discussion and scrutiny.
CNN reports that seismologists put the magnitude of the earthquake that devastated Nepal at 7.9 on the Richter magnitude scale (also Richter scale), and from various reports the death toll in the Nepal tragedy could possibly reach 10,000.
Reportedly geophysicists have been predicting this earthquake long before its actual occurrence. From monitoring the movements of the earth’s plates, they have discovered that the entire subcontinent of India is being driven inexorably underneath Nepal and Tibet at a speed of around 1.8 inches per year. They concluded that is the reason for the emergence of Mount Everest.
A BBC report stated: “Over millions of years, the squeezing has crushed the Himalayas like a concertina, raising mountains to heights of several miles and triggering earthquakes on a regular basis from Pakistan to Burma. Saturday’s quake was neither unusual nor unexpected, although it was larger than most.”
The BBC report further went on to state: “In the 81 years since the 1934 Bihar earthquake, the land mass of India has been pushed about 12 feet into Nepal. Think of all that movement getting stored in a giant spring lying under Nepal. The spring is stuck on a broad, rough surface which we call a fault plane (a fault line is what we see when it emerges from the ground).
“Sometimes, energy stored in the spring gets big enough to slip catastrophically, releasing all that pent-up strain and generating shaking strong enough to destroy buildings and kill people over a huge area.
“Saturday’s slip took place over an area about 1,000 to 2,000 square miles over a zone spanning the cities of Kathmandu and Pokhara in one direction, and almost the entire Himalaya mountain width in the other. A part of India slid about one to 10 feet northwards and underneath Nepal in a matter of seconds.
“We have this kind of detailed data thanks to major advances in seismology over recent years. Using measurements of shaking recorded on seismometers scattered across the world and sent in near or real time to agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey and to universities such as Columbia, we can infer the location and magnitude of a big earthquake very quickly.”
The foregoing is frightening indeed; but is the phenomenon of climate change a contributory factor to this tragedy?
Studies have concluded that global warming and the climate changes being experienced today are being caused by the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions by humans.
Human activities like the burning of fossil fuels, industrial production, etc, increase greenhouse gas levels. This traps more heat in our atmosphere, which drives global warming and climate change.
So while CO2 and other greenhouse gases are naturally present in the atmosphere, emissions from human activities have greatly amplified the natural greenhouse effect. CO2 concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere have increased significantly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and most especially in the past 50 years.4
Computer models, ice core evidence as well as fossilized land and marine samples show that CO2 is at its highest level in the last 3 million years and that CO2 concentrations have increased because of human activities like fossil fuel use and deforestation.
Human activities have caused the Earth’s average temperature to increase by more than 0.75°C over the last 100 years. Scientists have tracked not only the changes in the temperature of the air and oceans, but other indicators such as the melting of the polar ice caps and the increase of world-wide sea levels.
The impact of these shifts have an impact on all life-forms on our planet, including their sources of food and water. Current impacts that are already being observed are desertification, rising sea-levels as well as stronger extreme weather events like hurricanes and cyclones.
In an effort to combat climate change in Guyana with mitigation and prevention of its effects being the central aim, as well as to contribute to the world’s environmental survival mechanisms, former President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo crafted the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), details of which can be accessed on the LCDS website.
On 8th June 2009, then Guyana’s Head-of-State Dr. Jagdeo launched the LCDS. The Strategy outlines Guyana’s vision to promoting economic development, while at the same time combating climate change. The revised version was published on 24th May 2010 and subsequently the LCDS Update was launched on March 2013 by President Donald Ramotar.
Climate change is devastating the world, with tragedies of increasing magnitude unfolding with greater regularity creating havoc, especially in poor countries. Guyana has been on an unrelenting awareness drive to address this issue at various global fora. When will the superpowers listen and begin to take effective action so that the earth can be saved for future generations?