Glacial pace of climate action has imperilled Earth's glaciers
The Yala Glacier, at over 5,000 metres above sea level, is a glacier on the brink. With rapid warming and declining winter snowfall, the river of ice is set to soon stop accumulating enough ice mass to move — and lose its glacier status. It joins a growing list of frozen casualties to the Great Thaw that we are now living through, and on May 12, communities, scientists, and local government met at the foot of the glacier to mark its rapid disappearance.
The World Meteorological Organization's 2024 State of the Global Climate report, issued earlier this year, confirms last year was the hottest year on Earth in 175 years of observations. A major UN report published in March zeroed in on the implications of the relentless uptick in global temperatures, and emissions, for one of the most climate-sensitive components of the Earth system: our frozen mountain water resources. Among its findings is the stark fact that many mountain glaciers will not survive the 21st century.
Changes to our mountains' glaciers, snow, and permafrost may not dominate our newsfeeds to the same extent as heatwaves, wildfires, or conflicts, do. However, these are the source of 60-70% of Earth's freshwater, and so the UN's findings should alarm the world.
Many are aware of the very grave threats ice melt from polar ice sheets pose to flooding of low-elevation coastal populations and low-lying States; however, the threats we face from mountain glaciers and snow melting are set to hit us far sooner and will be no less devastating. In many cases, these will have more direct and near-term consequences for economic systems, and for massive human populations.
Nowhere is this truer than in Asia, a continent where half the population lives in a river basin whose headwaters rise in the Hindu Kush Himalaya — the 3,500km-long mountain range that stores more snow and ice than any region outside the two geographical polar regions. Already, we are seeing breathtaking losses in mountain snowpack and ice. A new World Glacier Monitoring Service study shows that mountain glaciers lost over six trillion tonnes of ice between 2000 and 2023. While that's 'only' 5.4% of total glacier mass, it's 18% more than the mass lost from the Greenland ice sheet, and more than double what's been lost from the Antarctic ice sheet. And these mountain losses are accelerating — increasing by 36% from the first decade of the study to the second.
The European Alps have recorded the largest losses, with 39% of glacier mass gone since the turn of the century. The Canadian Rockies have lost almost a quarter of their mass. While the snowpack and glaciers of High Mountain Asia are projected to be among the last to go, even here, one-fifth of the glacier mass has already melted away.
This relatively slower decline in glacier mass balance should be of cold comfort to policymakers, economists, and populations in India and across High Mountain Asia. A huge proportion of Asia's economic output is generated within the river basins of the 10 major rivers that rise in these mountains. Close to half of India's annual GDP is generated in just the Ganges and Indus river basins. According to glaciologist Heidi Sevestre, the risks of water stress from diminishing water from the Ganga, the Brahmaputra, and the Indus make these three of the top four rivers 'most vulnerable to cryosphere change'. While India has made significant strides in human development in recent years, food insecurity remains extremely high across South Asia.
Water variability prompted by glacier melt and changes in snowmelt for those living in up- and down-streams of the region's 10 major rivers — estimated to be above two billion people, 31% of whom are food insecure and 50% facing malnutrition — is one of the most serious and immediate consequences of global temperature rise, as per the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Water variability and incidence of droughts are likely to increase in the coming years, and overall water flows in river systems are also likely to decline from 2050 onwards.
The UN Report states these 'reduced water flows and increased droughts are expected to jeopardise food, water, energy, and livelihood security in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region as well as disrupt ecosystems and escalate risks of conflict and migration.'
The world in 2025 is facing extraordinary headwinds. Amidst all the conflict, political volatility, misinformation, and disinformation, it's clear that every fraction of a degree of warming lengthens the odds against not just peace but humanity's very survival. This year is also the year that the United Nations has declared as the 'International Year for Glaciers' Preservation', a year of awareness raising of the need for action to preserve our glaciers. In March, policymakers, academics, and other experts gathered all around the world to mark the first-ever UN World Day for Glaciers; at the just-concluded Dushanbe International Conference on Glaciers' Preservation, Tajikistan, one of the most glacier-rich countries in the world, leaders had the opportunity to emphasise their commitment to action. This year also marks 10 years since the Paris Agreement, by which countries had committed to limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times. Holding warming at this level is the only way to limit glacier loss. So far, we are failing to meet this important goal.
Asia is disproportionately exposed to the losses of the Earth's snow and ice. However, the good news is that Asia, due to its contribution of over 50% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, is uniquely placed to safeguard its own economies, populations, and ecosystems — not to mention the future of humanity, by decarbonising its economies, and accelerating the green transition. It can formalise this through the nationally determined contributions for the UN climate conference (COP30) to be held in Brazil this November.
This is the year that we must turn our emissions around. Ultimately, when people in the future reflect on this age, I hope that they will note that we have been focusing on the right issues. And perhaps, when they look back, they will look to this year, and to Asia, and see that this was the time and place when change started to move in the right direction.
John Pomeroy is co-chair of the UN Advisory Board for the International Year for Glaciers' Preservation - 2025 UNESCO Chair in Mountain Water Sustainability, and director of the Global Water Futures Programme at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. The views expressed are personal
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