NEW DELHI: The United Nations' new report highlights that the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers has increased the vulnerability of Himalayan grazers' livelihoods. This accelerated glacier melting leads to a decline in the quality of pastures for livestock grazing, which in turn affects their livelihoods.
The depletion of glaciers, often referred to as "eternal ice," may have long-term consequences. However, climate change is causing rapid melting, resulting in heavy flooding and destruction in downstream.
“The changes in snow and glaciers adversely affect herders at their summer residences and winter camps in the Himalayas,” the report underlines which released in the World Water Development Report for 2025, in coincidence with World Glacier Day.
Further, it also caused water scarcity in traditional water sources along migration routes. At the same time, it caused increased size of lakes on Tibet Plateau, the other side of Himalayas, pushing pastoralists to alter routes patterns of seasonal movements. In near future, it may lead to political tensions among the adjoining riparian countries.
The UN’s report ‘Mountains and glaciers Water towers’ has set off alarm that accelerating glacier melt risks unleashing an avalanche of cascading impacts on economies, ecosystems and communities, not just in mountain regions but at global level.
The fast runoff of melting glaciers also contributes to the increasing frequency of geohazard events in the region.
According to the report, five of the past six years have witnessed the most rapid glacier retreat on record. Especially years 2022- 2024 have witnessed the largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record.
Another report of 2023 by Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental scientific authority on the region, also underscored that Himalayan Glacier loss was as much as 65% faster in 2010s compared with 2000s. It said global warming led to rapid melting of Glaciers in Asia’s Hindu Kush Himalaya could lose up to 75% of their volume by end of century.
More than 275,000 glaciers worldwide cover approximately 700,000 km². Together with ice sheets, glaciers store about 70% of the global freshwater resources. High mountain regions are the world’s water towers.
“Depletion of glaciers therefore threatens supplies to hundreds of millions of people who live downstream and depend on the release of water stored over past winters during the hottest and driest parts of the year,” says Caitlyn Florentine, Co-Investigator of the glacier from the U.S. Geological Survey.
“In the short-term, glacier melt increases natural hazards like floods,” said Caitlyn.
Meanwhile, the UN report also document northern India Ladakh’s innovative adaptation to glacier melt affecting water availability for irrigated agriculture. People of Ladakh creates four types of ice reservoirs: basins, cascades, diversions and a form known locally as ice stupas.