On Thursday, 29 runners set off on a rare, high-altitude race in Bhutan to highlight the dangers of climate change to the Himalayan kingdom that is sandwiched between China and India, two of the world’s biggest polluters.

Bhutan — which is roughly half the size of Tasmania — has forests covering 70 per cent of its land. These absorb nearly three times more climate-changing emissions than the country produces each year.

After flagging off the race in the north-western town of Gasa, the country’s foreign minister, Tandi Dorji, spoke to Reuters by phone.

“The race is designed to raise awareness about climate change and its risks to our economy and the livelihood of the people,” he said.

Organisers said the runners would take five days to complete the more-than-200-kilometre Snowman Race, which is billed as the “world’s toughest ultramarathon”, running from Gasa to the north-eastern town of Chamkhar along a trail that normally takes trekkers up to 20 days.

South Asia’s only carbon negative country — with a population of fewer than 800,000 people — is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which is speeding up the melting of its glaciers and causing floods and unpredictable weather patterns.

Pakistan, at the western end of the Himalayas, has this year been hit by unprecedented flooding caused by unusually heavy rain and faster run-off from its glaciers. Its government and the United Nations have blamed climate change.

The racers — from 11 countries, including the United States, Germany, Japan, Tanzania and Bhutan itself — will run at an average altitude of 4,267 metres, with a high point of about 5,470 metres.

Their route will take them through diverse terrain, ranging from sub-tropical jungle to fragile, high-altitude ecosystems, with diverse flora and fauna as well as different people and cultures.

“It will be somewhat of an unknown, going to that high of an altitude, but I do feel good overall, physically.”

Reuters