Mountain villages fight for future as melting glaciers threaten floods

Himalayan glaciers are on track to lose up to 75% of their ice by the centuryâ€TMs end due to global warming , according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

After all the sensors are installed, village representatives will be able to monitor data through their mobiles, Jamil said. “Local wisdom is very important: we are the main observers. We have witnessed many things.”

Hassanabad is part of the U.N.-backed Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) II project to help communities downstream of melting glaciers adapt.

Amid a shortfall in funding for those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, village residents say they urgently need increased support to adapt to threats of glacial lake floods.

“The needs are enormous,” said Karma Lodey Rapten, Regional Technical Specialist for Climate Change Adaptation at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

Pakistan is the only country to receive adaptation funding from the Green Climate Fund - the Paris Agreementâ€TMs key financing pot - to ease the risk of such floods.

While countries like Bhutan have worked with other funders to minimize the threat from glacial lake floods, the $36.96 million GLOF II scheme - which ends this year - is a global benchmark for other regions grappling with this threat, including the Peruvian Andes and China.

Since 2017, weather stations as well as sensors measuring rainfall, water discharge, and river and lake water levels have been installed under the administration of Islamabad and UNDP. GLOF II has deployed speakers in villages to communicate warnings, and infrastructure like stone-and-wire barriers that slow floodwater.

In Hassanabad, a villager regularly monitors the feed from a camera installed high up the valley for water levels in the river by the glacierâ€TMs base during risky periods such as summer, when a lake dammed by ice from Shisper glacier often forms.