UN chief 'alarmed' at Arctic glacier melt
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he was "alarmed" by the rate at which the Arctic's glaciers are retreating as he visited the region ahead of key climate talks in December.
Ban said world leaders had a "moral political responsibility" to safeguard the future of the planet.
"I am very much alarmed and surprised to have seen these glaciers all worn," he told journalists as he visited the Ny-Aalesund climate change research station in the Svalbard archipelago, located 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) from the North Pole.
"Unless we take urgent action to stem this trend, we maybe virtually ice-free by 2037, even by 2030," he said.
Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, is on a two-day trip to the Arctic to see first-hand the effects of climate change ahead of international climate talks in Copenhagen in December.
He is the first UN chief to visit the Ny-Aalesund research station, an advisor at the Kings Bay company which runs the site, Bendik Eithun Halgunset, told AFP.
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