Himalayan glaciers are shrinking—a slow disaster for 250 million

Mitigation — global emission cuts — remains the only intervention that meaningfully slows long-term glacier loss. The IPCC's 1.5°C pathway preserves twice as much HKH ice as the 2°C pathway. Black carbon reduction is the highest-leverage near-term action, because cutting it has fast effects (years vs decades for CO2). India's PMUY clean-cooking program, transition to BS-VI vehicle emissions, and crop-burning reduction in Punjab/Haryana all reduce HKH black-carbon load. Water-demand management is the largest under-addressed lever — Indian agriculture uses 80% of water, mostly inefficiently; better drip irrigation, crop-pattern shifts away from water-intensive paddy in Punjab, and pricing reforms could deliver more water security than any infrastructure project. Glacial-lake risk reduction — automated lowering of dangerous lakes, GLOF early-warning systems, downstream evacuation drills — is finally scaling, with Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Nepal investing post-2021. Cross-border data sharing is the political ceiling: the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) doesn't include glacier or climate provisions.