One of the World’s Largest Storehouses of Fresh Water Is Collapsing

When Padma Thinles was 11 years old, he lived in a city called Leh, in the northern Indian territory of Ladakh, on the Western side of the Himalayas. Then, it was a small village with streams brimming with freshwater. Now, “forget the streams,” said Thinles, who is now 21 and still lives in the region.

“There’s no water left in the sewers, either,” he said.

Despite the location of Leh in the upper Indus River Valley, which is usually flushed with water, global warming has caused an immense water shortage that has led to the shutdown of many agricultural operations critical to the region.

“In Ladakh, we used to get 5 to 6 feet of snow every year, but in 2017, it didn’t snow an inch,” said Akshit Seth, 27, who runs a school for underprivileged children in Himachal Pradesh.

The rapid melting of glaciers and reduced snowfall in the Himalayas — often referred to as the “Third Pole” because of its massive reserve of ice — is gradually but definitively impacting the water and food supply for the people who inhabit the Hindu Kush Himalayan region.

As many as 2 billion people from South Asia to China are highly dependent for survival on the mountain range’s glaciers, which make up one of the world’s largest supplies of freshwater. And the world is set to lose about a third of that supply by 2100 because of global warming, a critical 2019 study found — even with the strictest possible climate crisis measures in place.

Glacial meltwater is an essential part of the region’s hydrology. The Himalayas are the source for a number of the world’s biggest rivers, which provide water for agriculture, drinking, and personal use: the Yangtze, the Ganges, the Indus and the Mekong. But the glaciers have lost about a third of their freshwater supply since 1975, a June 2019 study published in Science Advances found. And, more worryingly, in the 21^stcentury, the rate of loss has been twice what it was in the last quarter of the 20^th, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Nature.

“In most parts of Southeast Asia, climate change is not a projection,” said Ayushi Shah, a Mumbai-based journalist and co-founder of Eco-Spotlight, a site about sustainable solutions.

Scientists say the region will lose half of its present-day glacial area by 2060, a decade earlier than previously expected.

Climatic changes will likely affect both surface and groundwater systems, reducing their recharge and flow. In the higher altitudes, these changes will emerge earlier, altering the water flow in rivers and springs. Studies suggest that groundwater has already been reduced in many areas because of climate change, such as in the central Ganga Basin, which is then influencing water supply downstream.

Also, there is a high interdependence between the glaciers located in the Himalayas and the energy security of India. Almost 33 percent of the country’s thermal electricity and 52 percent of its hydropower is dependent on the water from rivers originating in the Himalayas.

The increasingly erratic environment doesn’t just threaten energy security — and thus food and water security — in India, but in the entire region. The Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra river basins creates energy for more than 700 million people in Asia.

“We are seeing disastrous punctures in our ecosystems happening in real time,” Shah said.

Who suffers most

Eighty percent of people displaced by climate change in the world are women, said Sophia Kianni, who, at just 18 years old, is the founder of a youth-led nonprofit called Climate Cardinals, and a UN youth climate advisor.

“Women have less socioeconomic power than men, so they are more likely to experience poverty, and it is harder for them to bounce back from climate change-induced disasters and environmental hazards,” said Kianni.

Girls and women in the developing world may not have the same access to education and opportunities for work as boys and men. They often come last, whether that means eating last, or being last in line to attend school because boys are thought to be a better investment.

Rural women and families employed in the Hindu Kush’s agriculture sector are particularly vulnerable to the effects of environmental change. Women in Leh and the surrounding areas must now walk miles each day to gather water for their family’s everyday use. Children and adults can’t bathe every day, and there is rarely sufficient access to drinking water.

“Climate change disproportionately impacts low-income communities because of their high dependence on natural resources,” Kianni said. “The impact of environmental disasters causes greater subsequent inequality. This is what we see when we look at the Himalayas, where women and underprivileged people disproportionately suffer the consequences of environmental degradation in the region.”

The reasons behind the changes

The middle Himalayas — the most populous part of the range — is most vulnerable to climate change. Unplanned construction and digs, combined with population overcrowding and too many tourists trampling through a fragile environment, is having profound effects on the availability of water. All of this has deepened already difficult socioeconomic conditions for the thousands of nomadic people living in the middle region, half of whom are cattle farmers while the rest rely on subsistence farming.

“For the sake of so-called development, regardless of whether it is through building unsustainable hydropower infrastructure or careless tourism, we have jeopardized the climate as well as individuals who live within that space,” Shah said.

In February, an avalanche released a torrent of ice, water, mud and debris that flooded a valley in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, blasting apart two hydroelectric dams. Uttarakhand lies on the southern slope of the Himalayan range. Dozens of people died, and many more are still missing. The disastrous event occurred in a warming Himalayan district where glacial masses have been quickly liquefying and withdrawing, causing various natural disasters and uncertainty about the continued viability of local streams.

While scientists are still studying what caused the avalanche in February, experts have been warning for years that it is not wise to build hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure projects in the area. Either they can trigger disasters like avalanches, or be wiped out by them, further damaging the lives of people already suffering because of the decline in the availability of water as the glaciers waste away.

One of our planet’s biggest storehouses of fresh water has begun collapsing, and “the local projections don’t look positive, at least for now,” said Thinles.

“I hope more people start paying attention to the Himalayan region,” he said. “We really need all the help we can get.”