Nepal Proposes Himalayan Climate Pact for India and China — SkimNews
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- PM Balendra Shah proposed a "Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism" at the UN General Assembly to unite Nepal, India, and China on cross-border disaster response and scientific data sharing, declaring: "Let the Himalayas become a laboratory of international co-operation rather than a frontier of fragmented information."
- Hindu Kush Himalaya glaciers are losing ice at double the rate seen in 1974-1999 compared with the period since 2000, according to a March report from ICIMOD, while temperatures across the region rise faster than the global average.
- Qinghai-Tibet Plateau glaciers have shrunk 24% over the past six decades, and the plateau now holds more than 14,000 glacial lakes covering over 1,100 sq km, People's Daily reported, citing the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Kang Shichang.
- A 2009 India-China joint research pact on the impact of warming on Himalayan and Tibetan glaciers collapsed after a single meeting, according to retired Wadia Institute glaciologist Dr DP Dobhal.
- Flood-season data-sharing agreements on the Brahmaputra and Sutlej have both expired; China stopped sharing Brahmaputra data in June 2023 and India has received no Sutlej data since 2022, junior minister Kirti Vardhan Singh told parliament in August 2025.
- Neither India nor China has formally responded to Shah's proposal; a senior Nepal foreign ministry official said it remained "at an early stage," while analysts at Crisis Group and RUSI flagged that glacial and hydrological data carries military value along the 3,500km disputed frontier.
Why it matters: More than 1.6 billion people live downstream of rivers fed by Himalayan glaciers, and disasters like glacial lake outburst floods cross borders regardless of who controls them. Yet the two upstream giants have a track record of data-sharing collapses tied to military tensions — most recently Beijing's June 2023 cutoff of Brahmaputra hydrological data — making Shah's ask as much a geopolitical test as a climate one.
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