Everest climber asks Aust to cut back

CANBERRA - Climate change is making it easier to reach the world's highest peak, the fastest-ever Mt Everest climber says.

Which is why Pemba Dorje Sherpa wants the Australian Government to reduce carbon emissions more quickly than it plans.

Mr Dorje Sherpa has climbed Mt Everest 10 times, the fastest trek in just eight hours 10 minutes.

But sadly, he says climbing the peak has become easier because of melting glaciers in the mountains near his Nepalese village of Rowaling.

Towns in his region already had begun feeling the effects of climate change with several glacial rivers bursting, flooding towns and causing avalanches.

A rise in temperatures had already started the "big melt" of ice sheets and glaciers in the valleys surrounding Mt Everest.

Water from those glaciers ordinarily provide water to many of Asia's main rivers for farming and water.

"A couple of years back because of the glacier outbursts ... many people died, many of our villages were left to suffer and some of them have no more jobs ... and they are suffering a lot," Mr Dorje Sherpa said through an interpreter.

Between 15,000 and 25,000 people live in his town and the only productive crop in the area was potato.

"The Australian Government ... should give their full support, because we really need it," he said.

"Otherwise I can tell you if we don't reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to at least 50 per cent, we Sherpas who live there in those areas will be finished in a couple of years' time."

Most people in Rowaling were not aware of the impact climate change was having on their lives.

"In my village, not many people are educated," Mr Dorje Sherpa said.

"Most of them don't know about these things.

"We try to talk and make them aware, but people like me who are aware are here with the message today."

The calls for a tougher emissions reduction target coincides with the release of a Friends of the Earth-commissioned report into the impacts of climate change on the Himalayas.

- AAP