Editing IPCC:AR6/SROCC/Chapter-2 (section)

===== 2.3.2.2.1 Changes in exposure =====

Confirming findings from SREX, there is ''high confidence'' that the exposure of people and infrastructure to cryosphere hazards in high mountain regions has increased over recent decades, and this trend is expected to continue in the future (Figure 2.7). In some regions, tourism development has increased exposure, where often weakly regulated expansion of infrastructure such as roads, trails, and overnight lodging brought more visitors into remote valleys and exposed sites (Gardner et al., 2002 <sup>[[#fn:r601|601]]</sup> ; Uniyal, 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r603|603]]</sup> ). As an example for the consequences of increased exposure, many of the more than 350 fatalities resulting from the 2015 earthquake triggered snow-ice avalanche in Langtang, Nepal, were foreign trekkers and their local guides (Kargel et al., 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r603|603]]</sup> ). Further, several thousand religious pilgrims were killed during the 2013 Kedarnath glacier flood disaster (State of Uttarakhand, Northern India) (Kala, 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r604|604]]</sup> ). The expansion of hydropower (Section 2.3.1) is another key factor, and in the Himalaya alone, up to two-thirds of the current and planned hydropower projects are located in the path of potential glacier floods (Schwanghart et al., 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r605|605]]</sup> ). Changes in exposure of local communities, for instance, through emigration driven by climate change related threats (Grau and Aide, 2007 <sup>[[#fn:r606|606]]</sup> ; Gosai and Sulewski, 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r607|607]]</sup> ), or increased connectivity and quality of life in urban centres (Tiwari and Joshi, 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r608|608]]</sup> ), are complex and vary regionally. The effects of changes in exposure on labour migration and relocation of entire communities are discussed in Section 2.3.7.

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