Nepal's prime minister proposes a Himalayan climate mechanism to pair India and China

The evidence offered for a shared mechanism comes in three different measures. A March report from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development found that the rate of ice loss across the Hindu Kush Himalaya has doubled since 2000, compared with 1974-1999 ^[9]. Kang Shichang, who heads the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with China's People's Daily Online that glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have shrunk 24% in area over the past six decades ^[10]. People's Daily puts the plateau's glacial lakes at more than 14,000, covering over 1,100 sq km ^[11].

The first is a rate across a whole mountain system, the second a change in area on one plateau, and the third a count. The thing these numbers don't tell you is how many of those lakes could flood downstream. A cross-border warning system would need that figure.

The hazard is also split across the border. A 2024 study the American Geophysical Union published expects landslide hazard in the Himalayas and Tibet to climb significantly as rainstorms increase ^[12]. It puts the biggest increases in absolute terms in places that are already vulnerable, among them Nepal and the Garhwal and Kumaon regions of India, while the greatest relative increase is projected on the Tibetan Plateau ^[12]. In our view that split is the practical case for pooled data: the places adding the most hazard and the places where it is growing fastest sit on different sides of national borders.

Shah put the case in one sentence. "Let the Himalayas become a laboratory of international co-operation rather than a frontier of fragmented information," he said ^[3]. The foreign ministry official, who spoke to the BBC anonymously, was more specific about the work under way. "The PM's proposal has given a political direction. Our ministry is working with other relevant agencies to put forward a preliminary framework which can be the basis for building common understanding," the official said ^[5]. That account comes from one unnamed source.

The nearest precedent is modest. In 2009, after a visit to Beijing, India's then environment minister Jairam Ramesh announced that India and China would jointly study how global warming is affecting glaciers in the Himalayas and Tibet ^[15]. The BBC reports that later efforts by the two countries to work together on Himalayan environmental issues have made little progress ^[16].

We think the first useful signal will be small: a named agency on the Indian or Chinese side willing to sit down with Nepal's ministry over the preliminary framework. A reply from a foreign ministry alone would tell us less, because the 2009 research pledge was also a ministerial announcement.