Climate Change and You: The Himalaya is on the verge of an ecosystem collapse that will affect 600 million Indians

Climate Change and You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to the newsletter to get it directly in your inbox.

There was much excitement in the final couple of weeks of January as parts of the Indian Himalaya had sustained snowfall. Amidst all the tourist selfies and Instagram Reels of gently drifting snowflakes swirling around Palampur in Himachal Pradesh, one fact was clear: Across the range, the mountains are suffering from an acute case of “snow drought”.

Himalayan ecosystems, as well as agriculture, depend primarily on winter precipitation, mostly in the form of snowfall. But according to the Indian Meteorological Department’s (IMD) seasonal rainfall data for the Indian Himalaya, we’re staring at a crisis. In December, Uttarakhand received no winter precipitation, while Himachal Pradesh recorded a 99% deficit, Jammu & Kashmir a 78% deficit and Ladakh a 63% deficit. For the first half of January, the figures were similar: Uttarakhand was -100%, Himachal -90%, Jammu & Kashmir -96%, and Ladakh -63%.

But this isn’t an isolated occurrence. Snow drought has now become an annual phenomenon, and with falling groundwater recharge, this is leading to other troubles later in the year, such as avalanches in the high Himalaya, melting glaciers, forest fires, and the drying up of freshwater streams. With every passing year, climate change is making the Himalaya even more unstable. This has grave implications not just for the 50 million people who live in the Indian Himalaya, but also for the nearly 650 million people wholive in the Gangetic and Brahmaputra valleys.

The Himalaya are part of high mountain Asia’s Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, alongside neighbouring ranges such as the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush. According to an important recent study of the effects of climate change on India, the mean temperature of the HKH has been rising at a rate of 0.28 degrees Celsius per decade between 1951-2020. At altitudes over 4,000m, this warming is even greater—0.34 degrees Celsius per decade. At low levels of carbon emissions, the HKH is projected to heat up by about 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. At current rates of warming, this will shoot up to an unimaginable 5.5 degrees Celsius.

This has grave freshwater implications as well, because if the world warms up by 1.5-2 degrees Celsius, Himalayan glaciers will lose up to 50% of their volume. The world is currently on course to heat up by nearly 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. In such a scenario, the Himalayan glaciers will lose up to 80% of their volume. We may soon have an ‘Abode of Snow’ without any snow or ice.

STATE OF THE CLIMATE

A future of extreme heat crisis

Mere numbers cannot truly represent the nature of the climate crisis. A study published in the journal Nature Sustainability in January analysed current heating data and future climate models to reveal that if global heating reaches 2 degrees Celsius, the number of people living in extreme heat conditions will double by 2050. For context, the last three years have seen the global temperature consistently breach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming; it is now clear that we are staring at dangerous levels of heat in our own lifetimes.

The study states that such extreme conditions will affect the world as a whole, but the worst effects will be in tropical regions and the southern hemisphere. India is listed among the countries that will be affected especially badly, alongside neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh. According to estimates, by 2050, the number of people living in extreme heat will increase from 1.54 billion (23% of the global population in 2010) to 3.79 billion (41% of the projected world population in 2050). We will start seeing the worst impacts of this heat stress as soon as the world breaches the 1.5 degrees Celsius heating barrier for good, which is expected to occur by 2030.

THE NEWS IN BRIEF

-The Union Budget was a disappointment in terms of allocating funds for either climate resilience or to tackle persistent atmospheric pollution. This story provides a useful roundup of the little that was announced.

-One Budget announcement that was interesting was a proposal made by the finance minister to allocate ₹20,000 crore towards developing carbon capture and storage technologies in heavy industries.

-There is a global climate finance gap of $4 trillion, according to the Economic Survey. This is money that the developed nations are required to provide to developing countries like India for climate mitigation and adaptation.

CLIMATE CHANGE TRACKER

Running out of water

Climate change is a crisis that is completely disbalancing the planet’s water cycle. From rising sea levels and oceanic heatwaves to the loss of freshwater, from floods to droughts, global heating is fundamentally collapsing our relationship with water. According to a new report from the United Nations, which was published in January, the world is fast approaching a state of global “water bankruptcy”, a problem that, if left unchecked, will lead to widespread ecosystem collapse, which in turn will lead to water conflicts within communities and between nations.

The report, titled, Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means In The Post-Crisis Era, is also of critical importance in an era when the push for greater use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is stretching already-stressed freshwater resources around the world. The report states that the world has entered a new stage where an increasing number of river basins and aquifers are struggling to return to their “historical normal”. Where once episodes like droughts, water shortages and pollution were considered temporary shocks, they are now becoming chronic.

I wrote in a previous newsletter about zero-year droughts, where cities run out of water. The new report expands our understanding of systemic water shortages by highlighting how societies are now using water faster than it can be replenished, and destroying long-term water aquifers.

The report also states that this overexploitation, in conjunction with climate change impacts such as melting glaciers, is causing a nearly permanent situation in whichcountries are caught between alternating droughts and floods. South Asian countries like India are again at the forefront of this crisis, with very high water risks across every parameter—from water pollution to access to safe and clean sanitation, rising sea levels, declining water tables, and melting glaciers.

The report urges countries to be truthful with themselves about the crisis, find ways to change this pattern of misuse, and work within multilateral frameworks to ensure that water conflicts do not emerge.

Here’s a fascinating interactive data map, called the Water Security Atlas, that you can use to understand how different regions of the world, including India, are facing severe water stress.

PRIME NUMBER

1

Many scientists studying climate tipping points (read about tipping points here) have had enough of the wishy-washy efforts of international climate action, because the crisis is more severe than world leaders and even international bodies like the UN would admit. Instead of the current goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2100, many are now calling for a more stringent goal, that of keeping warming below 1 degree Celsius by 2100.

They argue that even a 1.5-degree rise in global temperatures is too much, as it will doom vital Earth systems such as coral reefs and polar ice. As scientists note, over the past 12,000 years in which humanity has thrived, global temperatures “very rarely, if ever, crossed plus or minus one degree”. The planet has currently warmed by about 1.2-1.3 degrees Celsius, and as the Global Tipping Points Report 2025 showed, that is already enough to fatally threaten the health of many vital Earth systems.

REPORT OF THE MONTH

A suppressed UK government report on global ecosystem collapse

Instead of the usual book or movie of the month, I want to bring your attention to something else, because it neatly ties up all of the subjects that I’ve written about in this newsletter. This is the story of a UK security report that is so alarming that the UK government tried to bury it.

The British government was supposed to publish a report in October last year on the security implications of biodiversity collapse worldwide. Produced with inputs from the government’s security services, the report reached such a distressing conclusion that it was buried. Until January, that is, when a UK right-to-information petition forced the government to publish a highly restricted version. But what it contains, in the clear and dispassionate language of international security, is alarming.

Titled Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse And National Security, it states that ecosystems are collapsing globally, and this is leading to crop failures, outbreaks of infectious disease, and intensifying natural disasters. Unless this trend is reversed, we are looking at a state of international collapse, leading to a complete breakdown of the veneer of civilization, and perhaps even nuclear war.

One of the critical ecosystems that the report states is certainly headed for breakdown is the Himalaya, with a “realistic possibility of collapse starting from 2030”. It even states that “preventing ecosystem collapse would require the reduction of human impacts, alongside restoration of ecosystems. Restoration of some ecosystems (tropical forests) is more feasible than others (coral reefs, Himalayas)”. The report classifies the Himalaya as a Level 4 episode, in which every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse, leading to irreversible loss of function.

I will leave you with that sobering thought, dear reader. Sayantan will be back in a fortnight with another edition of Climate Change & You.