“This is national and international infrastructure,” he said, warning that the ecological system underpinning it is “approaching a tipping point”.
Not all the forces driving glacier loss are beyond the region’s control.
The Systemiq research estimates that roughly a third of Himalayan glacier melt is driven by black carbon, much of it originating from brick kilns in the plains. Soot deposited on snow and ice absorbs more sunlight and accelerates melting.
Unlike global greenhouse-gas emissions, black-carbon pollution is a lever that India and its neighbours can act on directly, the report argues.
“The Himalayas are approaching a tipping point, with millions of lives and livelihoods hanging in the balance,” said Arushi Chopra, Systemiq’s senior director and lead author. “Glaciers are melting faster than they were a decade ago.”
The report proposes 10 priority transitions, ranging from reducing black-carbon emissions and expanding glacier monitoring to improving disaster early-warning systems and changing the way tourism is developed in the mountains.
One priority is to strengthen disaster preparedness, with governments agreeing in advance what action to take when hazards emerge – from evacuation to protecting vulnerable infrastructure.
Another is to rethink tourism. The Indian Himalayan region receives roughly 400 million tourist visits a year, according to the report, and researchers argue that the objective should shift from maximising visitor numbers towards generating value that is retained and reinvested locally.
Pema Gyamtsho, director general of ICIMOD, said the risks were becoming increasingly complex.
“Glaciers are retreating, permafrost and high-mountain slopes are becoming increasingly unstable, and communities and infrastructure downstream face growing risks from complex and cascading hazards,” he said.
And those risks do not stop at the borders drawn across the Himalayas. Such hazards, Gyamtsho said, “do not respect national borders, and no single country can address them alone”.
That makes cross-border monitoring, shared risk information and early-warning systems, and joint investment in resilience increasingly urgent – not just to save lives, but to protect the livelihoods and economies of hundreds of millions of people who depend on the mountains.
