'Maybe It Will Destroy Everything': Pakistan's Melting Glaciers Cause Alarm
Pollution and global warming are causing glaciers to melt and form unstable lakes in the north of the country. NPR visits a valley where farms were destroyed by glacial floods.
For generations, farmers in the Harchi Valley in Pakistan's highlands enjoyed a close relationship with their glacier that snakes between two mountain peaks. It watered their fields, orchards and grazing lands.
Following local tradition, it has a name — Ultar — and a gender — male, because it is black, owing to the debris that covers it (female glaciers are white, residents say).
Now, their relationship is unraveling as pollution and global warming cause the Ultar glacier to melt and form unstable lakes that could burst their icy banks at any moment. Already this summer, much of Harchi's lands were destroyed in glacial floods.
Shamim Banno, a 55-year-old farmer, was working her potato fields when a
