Himalayan glaciers losing mass 65 percent faster, putting India’s economy at risk

Himalayan glaciers are losing mass 65 percent faster than they were a decade ago, putting water supplies, livelihoods and economic activity at growing risk across the region, according to a new report.

The research by global consultancy Systemiq, produced with the Integrated Mountain Initiative and with technical contributions from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment, also warns that the region faces a widening gap in glacier monitoring, the BBC reports.

The findings come after devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet that killed more than 1,300 people and caused widespread destruction, highlighting the risks posed by a rapidly changing Himalayan environment.

Only about 21 of an estimated 40,000 glaciers across the Himalaya-Karakoram region are being monitored in detail and on a sustained basis, the report says.

As glaciers retreat, expanding lakes can form behind unstable deposits of rock and ice. Rising temperatures are also destabilising permafrost and high mountain slopes, increasing the risk of cascading hazards.

India already has evidence of the threat's scale. Although about 18 percent of the country is Himalayan, the region accounts for around 35 percent of disasters, according to the report.

The Indian government told parliament in July that 56 glacial lakes had been classified as “very high risk” following a 2025 scientific assessment of 189 high-risk lakes in the Indian Himalayan region. The Central Water Commission is monitoring 2,485 glacial lakes larger than 10 hectares across India’s Himalayan river basins.

The economic stakes are particularly high. The report estimates that Himalayan water supports roughly 20 percent of India’s GDP through sectors such as wheat and rice farming, tea, hydropower and pilgrimage tourism. Yet mountain states capture only about 5 percent of that economic value, it says.

Economist Lord Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, described the Himalayas as the “Third Pole”, noting that hundreds of millions of people live downstream.

“This is national and international infrastructure,” he said, warning that the ecological system underpinning it is “approaching a tipping point”.

The risks include glacial lake outburst floods. In 2023, such a flood in Sikkim killed at least 70 people and damaged roads, bridges and hydropower projects. A similar disaster in Uttarakhand in 2021 killed more than 200 people after a massive flood swept through the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga valleys.

The report says the threat extends beyond sudden disasters. The Himalayas feed rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people across South Asia. ICIMOD expects “peak water” around the middle of the century in most Hindu Kush Himalayan river basins, after which glacier runoff is expected to decline as ice reserves diminish.

The research estimates that roughly a third of Himalayan glacier melt is driven by black carbon, much of it from brick kilns in the plains. Soot deposited on snow and ice absorbs sunlight and accelerates melting.

The report proposes 10 priority measures, including cutting black-carbon emissions, expanding glacier monitoring, improving disaster early-warning systems and changing how tourism is developed in the mountains.

It also calls for stronger disaster preparedness and greater cross-border cooperation on monitoring, risk information, early-warning systems and resilience investment.

Pema Gyamtsho, director general of ICIMOD, said glaciers were retreating while permafrost and high-mountain slopes were becoming increasingly unstable, leaving downstream communities and infrastructure exposed to complex and cascading hazards.

Such risks, he said, “do not respect national borders, and no single country can address them alone”.