This is a two part series on the recent cloudbursts and environmental disasters in mountain areas of Jammu and Kashmir, India and Pakistan administered Jammu and Kashmir. Part I can be read here.
The floods of July and August 2025 have left behind more than wrecked villages and grieving families. They have left behind a question that hangs over South Asia’s most fragile mountain belt: Will India and Pakistan finally acknowledge that climate disasters demand cooperation, or will they persist in their isolation, condemning millions along the Jhelum and Chenab to repeat tragedies?
It is no coincidence that this summer’s devastation coincided with the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). For more than sixty years, the IWT had acted as a safety valve, obliging both countries to share data on river flows and providing a mechanism, however imperfect, for communication in times of flooding.
By placing the treaty in abeyance earlier this year, India dismantled one of the few functioning channels of cooperation with Pakistan. The decision was justified in New Delhi on political and strategic grounds, but its environmental consequences are stark. Just as cloudbursts and glacier surges intensified, the institutional framework designed to manage shared waters ceased to function.
The irony is cruel. In a region where rivers do not recognise borders, the two riparian powers have chosen precisely this moment to retreat into their silos. Families in Muzaffarabad discovered this the hard way, receiving no alerts until embankments gave way, while pilgrims in Kishtwar were caught unprepared as torrents swept through their camps.
The gap was not one of technology. Both India and Pakistan have meteorological agencies capable of forecasting rainfall and tracking river surges. The gap was political: the absence of a mechanism to ensure that information crossed borders at the same speed as the floodwaters themselves.
The lesson is unavoidable. Kashmir cannot endure the coming decades without a shared safety net. Other regions provide examples. The countries of the Mekong basin in Southeast Asia have established a commission to exchange data and manage shared resources.
The Rhine basin in Europe is jointly governed by states that once fought wars over the same waters. Even the Nile, one of the most contested rivers in the world, has witnessed attempts at cooperative frameworks. If these models can survive geopolitical rivalries, there is no reason Kashmir should be condemned to perpetual isolation.
Survival under Joint River Monitoring Syatem
A joint river monitoring system is not a matter of aspiration but of survival. Shared gauges placed upstream and downstream, linked to real-time satellite data, would allow warnings to reach both sides before disaster strikes.
Imagine a cloudburst in Kishtwar no longer drowning Neelum Valley villages without warning, or a landslide in Neelum no longer catching Kishtwar off guard. Seconds can mean the difference between life and death. The technology exists, but the political will does not.
The same logic applies to early-warning systems at the community level. This summer revealed the heartbreaking truth that many fatalities were preventable. Families in Muzaffarabad, pilgrims in Chishoti, villagers in Leepa—all might have had a fighting chance if alerts had reached them even minutes earlier. Integrated systems could combine satellite rainfall predictions, telemetry from river gauges, and community-level communications.
In practice, that would mean text messages, loudspeaker announcements, and sirens, backed by trained volunteers in vulnerable valleys. Such systems already operate in flood-prone regions of Bangladesh, where they have saved countless lives. Kashmir deserves no less.
Beyond immediate disaster response lies the longer horizon of climate adaptation. At the United Nations climate negotiations in Baku last year, governments pledged a New Collective Quantified Goal of $300 billion annually by 2035 to help vulnerable regions.
The Loss and Damage Fund was also operationalised, designed precisely for places like the Western Himalayas, where lives and livelihoods are being upended by climate change. Yet to access these funds, proposals must be ambitious and credible. A joint application by India and Pakistan would not only unlock greater resources but also demonstrate to the international community that the region is capable of transcending hostility in the face of existential threats.
Such financing could transform Kashmir’s resilience. Reforestation campaigns could stabilise slopes stripped bare by deforestation and quarrying. River embankments and slope reinforcements could shield vulnerable settlements.
Redesigning of Pilgrimage & Tourist Routes
Pilgrimage and tourist routes could be redesigned to reduce pressure on glaciers and permafrost zones, ensuring that sacred traditions and livelihoods survive without destabilising fragile ecosystems. Community-based adaptation plans could provide alternatives for families displaced by floods, allowing them to rebuild lives without being pushed into further cycles of vulnerability.
But it must also be acknowledged that no international funds will be sufficient if human exploitation of the landscape continues unchecked. The mountains have been scarred not only by climate instability but also by our own hands. Uncontrolled pilgrimages, sprawling hotels in high-altitude wetlands, and hydro-power projects pursued without environmental safeguards are steadily eroding the natural buffers that once absorbed the shocks of heavy rainfall.
The sight of the Neelum–Jhelum Hydro-power Project’s intake dam clogged with felled logs after the July floods was a grim metaphor: man-made destruction choking the very infrastructure meant to provide resilience.
To imagine that these practices can continue while climate adaptation money rebuilds the damage is to live in denial. Regulation is unavoidable. Pilgrimages must be capped and managed in a way that preserves the sanctity of nature alongside spirituality.
Tourism must be reimagined, not as an endless expansion of resorts but as a sustainable industry rooted in preservation. Development projects must pass rigorous ecological assessments, with the recognition that destabilising one slope can trigger landslides that wipe out entire valleys. Without such restraint, the Himalayas will respond with ever-deadlier fury.
The deeper opportunity in this moment lies in what climate cooperation could mean politically. For decades, Kashmir has been trapped in cycles of conflict, its rivers reduced to bargaining chips, its people reduced to pawns. Climate change offers a chance, however modest, to carve out a new space for collaboration that is not about concessions but about survival.
Joint Venture Under Climate Funds
A joint application to the UN climate funds, framed around shared rivers and shared risks, could become the first act of genuine cooperation in generations. It would not be a political settlement, but it would be a bridge—built not of rhetoric but of necessity.
The alternative is bleak. If India and Pakistan continue on their present path, Kashmir will face summers like 2025 with increasing frequency. Families will be swept away in Leepa, Kishtwar, and Sonamarg.
Tourists will find themselves trapped on washed-out roads to Ratti Gali. Pilgrims will pray in shelters that cannot withstand the torrents. The Jhelum and Chenab, once the lifeblood of civilisations, will become synonymous with destruction. No amount of border fencing or diplomatic posturing will prevent this. Nature will not wait for politics to catch up.
History has often cast Kashmir as the stage upon which rival powers rehearsed their ambitions. Climate change has rewritten the script. The new frontier is not about territory but about survival.
Either India and Pakistan cooperate to defend the Himalayas, or they will both witness their collapse. The summer of 2025 was a warning, delivered in water and stone. To ignore it would be to condemn the region to cycles of loss too great to bear.
The Himalayas have spoken. The choice is no longer whether to listen, but whether to act.
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