Other Climate Research Initiatives
Research
2023 and 2025: "Inter-Polar Conferences Connecting the Arctic with the Third Pole." Co-organized by the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland and ICIMOD. First conference held in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 6-9, 2023. Second conference also held from September 3-5, 2025.
2023: "Geopolitics and Ecology of Himalayan Water (GEHW)." NYU Abu Dhabi’s GEHW was founded to both study and raise awareness on this underreported crisis that threatens the stability and livelihood of 2.5 billion people.
2021-2024: “Melting Futures: An Environmental History of the Himalayan Cryosphere." The Himalaya’s cryosphere (or frozen realm) has underpinned Monsoonal Asia’s climate and water supply for millennia, and now it is disappearing. This project forecasted the Himalaya’s melting future by documenting how its ice has shaped Asia’s past and produced its present. Focusing on the period since the end of the Little Ice Age (the mid-1800s), it investigated the climatic, cultural and geopolitical causes of ice loss, and asks how they have influenced and intensified each other. The project’s multifaceted approach to the cryosphere challenges the current fragmented debates on the melting ice, and will, therefore, generate improvements in cryosphere management.
2019 -2023: "Tibet's Rivers in the Anthropocene: History and Present Trajectories." This project aimed to produce a multifaceted history of the eastern Tibetan Plateau’s rivers, focusing on the increasing human impacts during the Anthropocene. It combined data from archival, cultural and oral sources in multiple languages with the results of scientific studies of river flow, water quality, and sediment, ice, and tree-rings analysis. The project produced both historical narratives and graphic representations that model past land and water usage. The results of the project underpin environmental policy for this hydrologically and ecologically crucial region, including the development of a paradigm of care based on the region’s indigenous cultural resources.
2018-2022: “Himalayan connections: melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a changing climate.” This project studied how vulnerable high-altitude communities in Nepal and Bhutan experienced climate change hazards, examining traditional environmental practices alongside the impacts of new communication technologies and changing governance.
2012: "Himalayan Glaciers, Hydrology, Climate Change, and Implications for Water Security." Himalayan Glaciers: Climate Change, Water Resources, and Water Security makes recommendations and sets guidelines for the future of climate change and water security in the Himalayan Region. Glaciers in the region are retreating, but the consequences for the region's water supply are unclear. The report emphasizes that social changes, such as changing patterns of water use and water management decisions, are likely to have at least as much of an impact on water demand as environmental factors do on water supply.
2011-2017: "The Himalayan Climate Change Adaptation Programme (HICAP)." The HICAP generated knowledge about climate change impacts on natural resources, ecosystem services, and the communities depending on them, contributing to policy and practice for enhanced adaptation.
Organizations
ICIMOD is a unique intergovernmental institution leading the global effort to protect the pulse of the planet - the Hindu Kush Himalaya - and the people, resources and culture that define it.
Loka Initiative is an interdisciplinary, capacity building and outreach platform at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for faith leaders and culture keepers of Indigenous traditions working on environmental and climate issues.