The snow and ice in the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountains—a massive mountain range in central and south Asia.

People and nature on the brink

An SOS from Asia’s water towers

Climate Change

Outside the Arctic

On thin ice: The disappearing cryosphere

This story is in the The Circle 2024.01 issue.

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The snow and ice in the Hindu Kush Himalaya—a massive mountain range in central and south Asia— provide water to up to two billion people in Asia and support a region of vast, interconnected biodiversity. Researchers with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) say the consequences of climate change in these mountains are impossible to overstate. SUNITA CHAUDHARY makes the case for urgent action.

The mountainous “water towers” of the Hindu Kush Himalaya hold the third-largest mass of frozen water reserves in the world after the Arctic and Antarctic. But unlike those remote regions, this one is densely populated. Rivers originating here are critical for 271 million people living in the mountains and another 1.65 billion people downstream.

The mountain range stretches from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the East and includes much of Pakistan, all of Nepal and Bhutan, mountainous border regions of India and China, and portions of Bangladesh. People in all these areas are at risk as glaciers, snow and permafrost in the region undergo unprecedented and largely irreversible changes due to the climate crisis.

These changes threaten the timing, availability and seasonal distribution of mountain water resources as well as food security, energy, ecosystems and livelihoods. The changes are already hitting some communities hard in the form of floods and landslides. During the last monsoon season, we saw devastating losses hit community after community as slopes made unstable by thawing permafrost and extreme rainfall led mountainsides to calve away, creating rivers of sediment capable of sweeping away everything in their path: homes, farms, hospitals, roads, schools, hydropower.

© ILO / Pradip Shakya n Fkickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

A disappearing way of life

I approach the subject of cryosphere loss as an ecosystems specialist and trained conservationist, but also as a Tharu Indigenous woman. I was born and raised in an Indigenous community in a subtropical forest and riverine landscape of Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Our community’s deep connection to the land (jamin), water (jal) and forest (jungle) is integral to our physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

During my childhood, I gathered wild mushrooms and harvested vetiver grass from the nearby forests to weave baskets. But unprecedented flooding, erratic rainfall, droughts and wildfires have had profound impacts on our jamin, jal and jungle. Mushroom gathering is rare now, and we must walk several kilometres into the forest to find vetiver grass.

These changes hit me deeply as a Tharu woman. Our culture is at odds with the extractive industrial and economic models that are accelerating today’s polycrisis. Instead, we have a deeply felt knowledge of the extent to which the health of our communities and of the land are entwined. Just like Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic, it is impossible to live as close to the land as we Tharu do and not feel this indivisibility in your bones.

Nearly three-quarters of biodiversity already lost

Of course, what I see as a biodiversity expert is just as devastating.

The astonishing biodiversity of the Hindu Kush Himalaya is disappearing with extraordinary speed. A staggering 70 percent of plant and animal diversity in the region has been lost in the last century, and wildlife, rivers and springs, forests, rangelands and wetlands are in crisis. With up to 85 percent of rural communities directly reliant on nature for food, water, flood control and more, the impacts extend beyond nature and will compound the vulnerability of the 271 million people who live in these mountains.

Without action, this outlook is set to worsen rapidly. Significant increases in extreme and unprecedented climate events have already resulted in massive environmental and socio-economic damages.

ICIMOD has been working for the peoples, nature and governments of this mountain biome for four decades. Given the pace and scale of the environmental and climate risks the region faces, we are now focused on doing our utmost to stave off the precipitous declines in nature, the losses in the cryosphere, and the changes in water availability.

All hands on deck

In a 2023 flagship report, Water Ice Society and Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, we stated categorically that deep cuts to emissions must start now. Every increment of a degree of warming matters to the glaciers here and the hundreds of millions of people and countless irreplaceable lifeforms that depend on them.

Everyone alive today must press world leaders to ensure that the people who are most affected and least to blame are compensated and offered support to adapt. Last year, we launched a major advocacy drive, #SaveOurSnow, to rally scientists, athletes and communities across Earth’s frozen zones to press their governments for faster action.

At ICIMOD, much of my work focuses on improving our understanding of what is happening in high-altitude ecosystems and communicating this to decision-makers. My colleagues and I are working to increase funding for local and Indigenous groups’ environmental stewardship, supporting the growth of green, circular enterprises in the region, promoting sustainable agricultural management practices and policies, and supporting clean-air innovators tackling air pollution in our region.

We have also joined governments and negotiators from our region and other mountain and cryosphere zones to call for action at key global events. Despite some progress at COP28—including the first mention of mountains and the cryosphere in the final decision texts—things clearly need to move much, much more quickly. The good news is that in some corners, change is coming faster than anticipated as people begin to realize that it will be far less expensive to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis than to adapt to them later.

We all need to hold on to hope—and to use our votes and voices to press for the survival of snow, ice, species and humanity. It is not too late to avert the worst, but the work must start now.