Nepal floods: The Himalayas are melting faster - and India's economy is 'at risk'

The report proposes 10 priority transitions, ranging from reducing black-carbon emissions and expanding glacier monitoring to improving disaster early-warning systems and changing the way tourism is developed in the mountains.

One priority is to strengthen disaster preparedness, with governments agreeing in advance what action to take when hazards emerge — from evacuation to protecting vulnerable infrastructure.

Another is to rethink tourism. The Indian Himalayan region receives roughly 400 million tourist visits a year, according to the report, and researchers argue that the objective should shift from maximising visitor numbers towards generating value that is retained and reinvested locally.

Pema Gyamtsho, director general of ICIMOD, said the risks were becoming increasingly complex.

“Glaciers are retreating, permafrost and high-mountain slopes are becoming increasingly unstable, and communities and infrastructure downstream face growing risks from complex and cascading hazards,” he said.

And those risks do not stop at the borders drawn across the Himalayas. Such hazards, Gyamtsho said, “do not respect national borders, and no single country can address them alone”.

That makes cross-border monitoring, shared risk information and early-warning systems, and joint investment in resilience increasingly urgent — not just to save lives, but to protect the livelihoods and economies of hundreds of millions of people who depend on the mountains.