There is now an urgent need for international cooperation, adaptation strategies and steadfast actions to face the unfolding crisis in the world’s mountains and glaciers, the UN World Water Development Report 2025 stressed with hints on the emerging challenges facing the global community on the climate front.
By Salam Rajesh
The global platform United Nations has once again sounded the alarm bell on the climate crisis, warning potential dangers to the world community from escalating glacial melts at unprecedented rate with every succeeding year, faster now than was anticipated.
The UN-Water Forum, aided by UNESCO, brought out the UN World Water Development Report 2025 this week, wherein the report talks elaborately on the extent to which climate disruption, biodiversity loss, and unsustainable activities are transforming mountain environments at an alarming rate, threatening the water resources upon which billions of people and countless ecosystems depend.
There is now an urgent need for international cooperation, adaptation strategies and steadfast actions to face the unfolding crisis in the world’s mountains and glaciers, the report stressed with hints on the emerging challenges facing the global community on the climate front. Reports are piling up on scientific assessments on the evident changes taking place both in the Arctic and the Antarctic Circles, citing splitting icebergs, shifting icebergs and glacial retreats.
The UN World Water Development Report exerts that the mountains provide up to 60 percent of the world’s annual freshwater flows, with more than one billion people who live in mountainous regions, and over two billion people directly downstream, relying on water originating from the mountains for their drinking water, sanitation, agriculture and livelihoods.
Mountain regions are vital to sectors like pastoralism, forestry, tourism, and energy production. In the Andean countries 85 percent of hydropower is generated from mountain areas. Mountains also provide high-value products like medicinal plants, timber, and other forest products, unique mountain livestock and specialty agriculture products – all of which are water-dependent, the report extolled.
The UN-Water Forum report, however, indicates that glaciers across the world are melting at unprecedented rates, and mountain waters are often the first to be exposed – and the most vulnerable – to the severe consequences of climate and biodiversity disruptions.
Reflecting on the UN-Water Forum report, the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay opines that, “Regardless of where we live, we all depend in some way on mountains and glaciers. But these essential natural water towers are facing imminent peril. This report demonstrates the urgent need for action and that the most effective solutions require a multilateral approach”.
Warning that the receding glaciers and dwindling snowfall in mountains will impact two-thirds of all irrigated agriculture in the world, and will have wide-reaching implications for the vast majority of the population, the report stressed that the situation is critical as up to half of rural mountain dwellers in developing countries are suffering from food insecurity, with women and children being most at risk.
Due to climate disruptions, rapid changes in the amount, frequency and regularity of snowfall are severely disrupting the water supply, creating unstable environments for biodiversity, and unpredictable conditions for human livelihoods, the report stressed.
Citing a case study, the report noted that in Japan, for example, the iconic snowcap on Mount Fuji, a UNESCO World Heritage site, had recently started appearing nearly one month later than usual. The media was ripe with speculations on this fallout earlier this year, hinting at the extremity of climate change and global warming in real time.
Climate disruption is also being felt strongly in mountain regions with no recorded glaciers or snowmelt, where water flows originate instead from rainfall, the report noted citing that in tropical regions, such as Madagascar, changes in mountain waters are impacting the irrigation of cacao, rice and fruit production – some of the island nation’s most important agricultural exports.
Apple growers in India’s Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh were reported facing severe hardship in maintaining their orchards due to retreating snowline and lesser amount of snowfall this winter, endangering their livelihoods and rural economies.
These changes in precipitation are increasing the risk of natural disasters such as droughts and glacial lake outburst floods, the report noted. The Colorado River in North America, which serves about 40 million people, gets most of its water from snowfall in the Rocky Mountains. The river basin has been in drought since the year 2000 and the situation may become exacerbated by warmer temperatures, which are causing more precipitation to fall as rain that runs off more quickly than mountain snow, the report noted.
The report further highlighted that despite their essential role in maintaining equilibrium in the natural systems and providing sources of life for millions of people globally, mountain regions have been largely absent from global agendas.
National policies for water, agriculture, industry and energy tend to favour more populous river basin areas while mountains generally receive much less attention, or are often only considered as sources for downstream users, the report noted.
Incidentally, the year 2025 marks the launch of the first-ever World Day for Glaciers on 21st March, emphasizing the need for immediate and coordinated international efforts, aligned with the World Water Day observation on 22nd March.
UNESCO is co-leading the observation with the World Meteorological Organization as well as the 2025 International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation forum, a global initiative to mobilize resources and commitments for glacier conservation, and the Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025-2034) to advance scientific understanding and policy solutions on the issue.
These major events would give rise to new impetus for international cooperation for the protection of glaciers and mountain waters, the report stated, with specific focus on the implications on both the human and the natural environments.
Many mountain ranges and their ecosystem services are transboundary in nature, and, therefore, treaties or agreements can enhance cooperation through data and information sharing, helping to fill gaps in the human and institutional technical capacity, and promote and foster dialogue and diplomacy, the report exhorted.
Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Chair of UN-Water Forum sums up the issue saying that, “Water flows downhill, but food insecurity rises uphill. The earth’s mountains provide 60% of our freshwater, but the communities that safeguard these vital resources are among the most food insecure. We must invest in their resilience to protect glaciers, rivers – and a shared future for all of us”.