How melting glaciers could ‘put 20% of GDP at risk’

Why in the News

A new assessment of the Himalayas has put a monetary value on India’s dependence on the mountain range, estimating that Rs 64.8 lakh crore, or 21.5% of India’s FY24 GDP, rests on Himalayan water and Himalayan economies. The report, ‘A resilient Himalaya: protecting a region at risk and securing future prosperity’, follows the Nepal floods that placed the warming Himalayas under public attention. It converts glacier retreat from an environmental concern into a measurable macroeconomic exposure. The tension it exposes is one of timing. Meltwater flows are rising now and are expected to peak around the middle of this century before declining, while the one driver India can act on quickly, black carbon, is being tackled unevenly across States.

What is the ‘A resilient Himalaya’ report?

1. Compiling body: The report was compiled by the consultancy Systemiq, in partnership with the Integrated Mountain Initiative.
2. Supporting institutions: It was supported by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal, and the GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment, Uttarakhand.
3. Core estimate: It places Rs 64.8 lakh crore, equal to 21.5% of India’s FY24 GDP, as dependent on the Himalayas.

How was the 20% of GDP figure arrived at?

1. Direct layer: The Gross State Domestic Product of the Himalayan States is counted in full as Himalaya dependent output.
2. Indirect layer: Downstream agriculture, manufacturing, hydropower and services reliant on Himalayan fed rivers and on groundwater recharge are added. Rain fed production is expressly excluded from this layer.
3. Induced layer: Supply chain and wage spending effects are counted, such as tractors sold from southern States into the Indo Gangetic Plains, and wages spent on food and services.

Why does glacier retreat translate into economic risk?

1. Three river systems: The Himalayas feed the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra systems, which support agriculture, cities and industry downstream.
2. Named dependent economies: The report ties these flows to wheat and rice across the Indo Gangetic plain, tea in Assam and Bengal, hydropower in the Northeast, and pilgrimage economies in downstream towns.
3. Disaster concentration: The Himalayas account for 18% of India’s land but roughly 35% of its disasters, making them a standing disaster hotspot rather than an occasional one.
4. The reconstruction trap: Disasters create food and water insecurity, disrupt supply chains, displace people and raise macroeconomic and sovereign debt pressure. Reconstruction spending then leaves less money available for building future resilience.

Why do meltwater flows rise before they fall?

1. Glaciers as storage: Glaciers hold water as ice and release meltwater into rivers, particularly during the dry season when rainfall contributes least.
2. Peak Water: Himalayan river basins are expected to reach ‘Peak Water’ around the middle of this century, the point at which glacier meltwater reaches its maximum.
3. The decline after the peak: Flows begin to fall after that point as the ice reserve shrinks, so today’s higher flows are not a durable supply.

Why is black carbon the driver India can act on fastest?

1. What black carbon is: Black carbon is soot produced by incomplete combustion, and unlike global warming as a whole it is a pollutant India can act on quickly on its own.
2. The snow darkening effect: When black carbon lands on snow it darkens the surface, so the snow absorbs more sunlight instead of reflecting it. Modelling shows this adds about 40 watts per square metre of surface heating in the spring season across the Himalaya.
3. Zigzag kiln technology: Converting brick kilns to zigzag firing, a method that burns fuel more efficiently, cuts black carbon and particulate emissions by roughly 70% and fuel use by 20% to 30%.
4. Uneven adoption: Punjab and Haryana have completed the switch to zigzag kilns. Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest brick producer, is at only 56%, and the rest of India runs on traditional technology.
5. Kilns are not the whole story: Real progress requires kilns, cookstoves, transport and crop residue burning to be tackled together rather than one source at a time.

Challenges to securing the Himalayan economy

1. Transboundary river dependence: The three river systems the estimate rests on originate outside India in whole or in part, so flow security is not a purely domestic policy variable. Eg. The Indus system is governed by a treaty arrangement with Pakistan, and the Brahmaputra rises in Tibet where upstream storage decisions are not disclosed to India.
   The Fix: Build hydrological data sharing into existing basin level dialogues so flow changes are detected upstream rather than inferred from downstream damage.
2. Gaps in glacier monitoring: India monitors only a small fraction of its glaciers on the ground, so mass balance estimates rest heavily on modelling. Eg. Glacier and lake monitoring shortfalls were flagged after the February 2021 Chamoli disaster in Uttarakhand.
   The Fix: Expand automated weather station and mass balance networks across benchmark glaciers in each Himalayan basin.
3. Glacial lake outburst risk: Warming creates and expands moraine dammed lakes whose failure sends a flood wave downstream with little warning time. Eg. The October 2023 South Lhonak lake outburst in Sikkim destroyed the Teesta III hydropower project at Chungthang.
   The Fix: Attach early warning instrumentation and drawdown works to every high risk lake identified in the national expansion inventory.
4. Construction in a fragile zone: Hydropower, highway and tunnel projects add load and cut slopes in terrain that is already seismically active and steep. Eg. Land subsidence in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, in January 2023 forced the evacuation of hundreds of households.
   The Fix: Make cumulative basin level impact assessment, rather than project by project clearance, the condition for approving new infrastructure in the Himalayan States.
5. Fiscal asymmetry between hill and plain States: Himalayan States carry the cost of protecting catchments while the economic benefit accrues largely downstream. Eg. Forest cover in the Himalayan States supports irrigation and power generation in the plains without a matching transfer for that service.
   The Fix: Widen ecological and forest cover weightage in Finance Commission devolution so catchment protection is financed rather than assumed.

Conclusion

The estimate changes the category of the problem rather than the facts of it. A mountain range treated as an environmental subject now carries a fifth of national output as a stated exposure, which places it inside fiscal and investment planning rather than only inside climate policy. Two things cannot both hold: flows rising toward a mid century peak are being planned against as though they were permanent, while the ice reserve that produces them is shrinking. The near term marker is whether brick kiln conversion moves beyond the two States that have completed it.

Back2Basics: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)

1. Nature: An intergovernmental knowledge and learning centre for the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
2. Establishment and headquarters: Founded in 1983, with its headquarters at Kathmandu, Nepal.
3. Membership: Its eight regional member countries are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
4. Mandate: It supports mountain research, cryosphere monitoring and transboundary cooperation across the Hindu Kush Himalaya.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2020, GS1, 10] How will the melting of Himalayan glaciers have a far-reaching impact on the water resources of India? (हिमालय के हिमनदों के पिघलने का भारत के जल-संसाधनों पर किस प्रकार दूरगामी प्रभाव होगा ?)”