A Requiem For Glaciers And The Silent Crisis Threatening World’s Water Security

Three days back, on May 28, a mass of rock and ice from a glacier thundered down a Swiss mountainside, and within minutes obliterated Blatten village. Ironically, this happened just a day before the High-Level International Conference on Glaciers’ Preservation kicked off in Dushanbe in Republic of Tajikistan. 

The Swiss village has become a haunting reminder of what melting glaciers can do to the human population. Fortunately, Blatten was evacuated earlier this month due to signs of glacier instability. This averted loss of lives, though a 64-year-old man remains missing. 

As per news reports, 90 per cent of the village has been destroyed and the situation could get worse, because a large chunk of the Birch Glacier, which broke off and caused the landslide, has affected the Lonza River, raising concerns about the possibility of dammed water flows. The Swiss Environment Minister Albert Rösti described it as “an extraordinary event”.

A glacier is a huge mass of ice that moves slowly over land. The term ‘glacier’ comes from the French word glace (glah-SAY), meaning ice. Glaciers are also called “rivers of ice” and are the cornerstones of life on earth. The most important resource provided by glaciers is freshwater. But these glaciers are disappearing as global warming is leading to their rapid melting.

Two weeks ago, on May 15, Nepal held a moving tribute to Yala Glacier. Once a vast river of ice, Yala has already shrunk by 66 per cent and receded nearly 800 metres since the 1970s, due to the impact of climate change. 

Buddhist monks, climate scientists and local communities gathered for a solemn 'ice funeral', to honor what remains of the glacier and to raise awareness of the rapid loss. 

Over 1,800 kilometres from the site of the Yala memorial, a high-level conference on glaciers is underway in Dushanbe. There, conversations, discussions and lectures are on about the role of glaciers in maintaining global ecological balance and addressing water-related challenges. The need, say the experts, is to highlight the urgency of halting glacial retreat and to raise it to the top of the global climate agenda.   

“Glaciers, which account for 75% of the world’s freshwater resources, are vanishing due to climate change. Urgent and collective global action is essential to confront this crisis,” said Prime Minister of Tajikistan Kokhir Rasulzoda.

“Glacier preservation is not just a problem of countries with glaciers but rather a global crisis that deserves the immediate attention of the international community,” Rasulzoda said in his opening address.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed cited figures from the World Glacier Monitoring Service that since 1975, glaciers have lost more than 9,000 billion tons, which is equivalent to a huge ice block the size of Germany with 25 meters thickness.

There are more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide, covering approximately 700,000 square kilometres (km²). Together with ice sheets, glaciers store about 70 per cent of the global freshwater resources.  

Dushanbe Conference on Glaciers’ Preservation

This international conference emphasises the crucial connection between glaciers and sustainable socio-economic development. It draws attention to how glacier preservation is essential to safeguard livelihoods, ensure water availability, minimise related hazards, and recognise the role of indigenous peoples and knowledge, especially amongst vulnerable regions and populations.

The Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, UN Development Programme and World Meteorological Organization are partners  in organising the conference in Tajikistan. Government leaders, heads of international agencies and glacier experts, policymakers, and climate leaders from around the world are in attendance.

“The WMO State of the Global Climate 2024 report revealed that for the third consecutive year, glaciers retreated in all 19 regions. Five of the past six years have witnessed the most rapid glacier retreat on record,”  said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

“The death of a glacier is more than just the loss of ice. We need to strengthen glacier monitoring and protection through models and observations. We need more data sharing and more political will. We need to bridge science and services and forecasts and action,” she said.

The melting of glaciers is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of the 21st century. Climate change has already caused the loss of about one-third of mountain ice, and the Blatten disaster is yet another wake up call for immediate action.

As glaciers shrink, they disrupt local and seasonal water supplies that billions of people depend on for drinking water, agriculture, and energy production. This impacts agricultural productivity, leading to food insecurity, especially in regions where glacier-fed rivers are vital for irrigation. Additionally, the decline in glacier-fed water flows threatens hydro-power generation, which many countries, such as India, depend on for energy security and economic development.

“Melting glaciers threaten lives on an unprecedented scale – including the livelihoods of more than 2 billion people in Asia, alone,” said Asian Development Bank Vice-President Yingming Yang. 

According to Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), “In 2022, a UNESCO study highlighted that the glaciers in one third of these world heritage sites are projected to disappear by 2050 — a stark reminder of the need for bold and immediate climate action. At UNESCO, we are committed to glacier preservation, with glaciers present in over 120 UNESCO-designated sites, including biosphere reserves, global geoparks and world heritage sites.”

A New Study Warns of Glacial Loss

On the very same day as the Dushanbe conference, an international study published in Science on May 29 reported that glaciers are even more sensitive to global warming than previously estimated. 

The study titled Glacier preservation doubled by limiting warming to 1.5°C versus 2.7°C, warns that if the world warms to 2.7°C, the trajectory set by current climate policies, only 24 per cent of present-day glacier mass remains. In contrast, limiting warming to 1.5°C would preserve 54 per cent of glacier mass. 

Closer home, according to the study, the Hindu Kush Himalaya (a region that extends 3,500 kilometres over Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan), only 25 per cent of 2020 ice is likely to remain at 2°C. Over two billion people depend on several rivers that the glaciers feed in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region. 

The HKH region is also known as the world’s water tower as it is the source of ten of Asia’s largest rivers as well as the largest volume of ice and snow outside of the Arctic and Antarctica (See map: The Hindu Kush Himalayan River).

Even if temperatures should stop rising today, the world’s glaciers would still lose 39 per cent of their mass, compared to 2020 levels, portends the study adding that this  would lead to a sea level rise of 113 millimetre (mm).

A 2023 report titled, Water, Ice, Society, and Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), predicts that the region could lose up to two-thirds of its glaciers by the end of the century. In Tajikistan, around 30 per cent of glaciers have disappeared over the last century.

The ICIMOD report warns that the HKH cryosphere (the frozen parts of the planet) is undergoing unprecedented and largely irreversible changes over human timescales, primarily driven by climate change. With increased warming at higher elevations, there is accelerated melting of glaciers, increase in permafrost thaw, a decline in snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns.

Meanwhile, the Vanj yakh (former Fedchenko) Glacier, the world’s largest continental glacier, situated in the Central Asian Pamirs range, central Tajikistan, has retreated by over 1 km in the past 70–80 years and shrunk by 44 square kilometre (km²) . That’s the equivalent of 6.4 million Olympic swimming pools and 6,000 football fields worth of ice.

The melting of polar glaciers and ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica is also accelerating. Rapid ice loss is contributing to raising global sea levels, posing severe risks to small island states and coastal populations, where hundreds of millions of people live. In the short-term, glacier melt increases natural hazards like landslides and floods.

The United Nations has designated 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation and established the Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025-2034) to address glacier melt and cryosphere challenges through scientific research and monitoring. 

Furthermore, the Pact for the Future, adopted at the Summit of the Future on September 22, 2024, provides a framework for glacier preservation. These include addressing glacier melt through scientific research, resource mobilization and strengthening cooperation at all levels. 

On June 1, the Dushanbe conference will conclude with the release of the Dushanbe Glaciers Declaration. The declaration will outline actionable commitments, collaborative initiatives, and strategic recommendations to be presented at the UN Climate Change, or Conference of Parties (COP30) in Brazil, in November this year.

(Nidhi Jamwal is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, who reports on climate, environment, and rural issues.)