Glaciers – the world’s hidden water banks - are a source of life for billions. The seasonal melt from mountains and glaciers sustains some of the world’s most important rivers, such as the Indus, the Nile, the Ganges and the Colorado. Those and other mountain-fed rivers irrigate crops, provide drinking water for nearly two billion people, and power electricity generation.
But, as glaciers shrink and vanish, changes in water flows pose a growing risk to the water, food and livelihood security of billions of people.
In the short term, accelerated melting can trigger environmental hazards: flash floods, glacial lake outburst floods, avalanches and landslides.
In the long term, the glaciers as water sources will simply disappear.
By century’s end, most glaciers will contribute far less water than they do today, undermining agriculture in both mountain villages and sprawling lowland breadbaskets downstream.
Mountains cover more than a quarter of the world’s land and are home to 1.2 billion people, but these regions are heating up more rapidly than the global average. Mountain communities are especially vulnerable to increasing climate variability and decreasing seasonal water availability for agriculture and irrigation. With often no viable alternative water supply, the loss of agricultural production can lead to climate displacement and greater instability.
Five of the past six years have seen the most rapid glacier retreat on record, and the impacts are already being felt.
Communities from the Andes to the Himalayas are experiencing shorter snow seasons, erratic runoff, and the loss of reliable water. In Peru, dwindling glaciers have slashed crop yields. In Pakistan, reduced snowmelt threatens seasonal planting cycles. Many glaciers have already reached or are expected to reach “peak water” – the point at which meltwater runoff is at its maximum, after which flows will gradually decline – in the coming two or three decades. This means everyone who depends on glacier-fed rivers faces increasing scarcity when population growth will push water demand even higher.
Beyond science and survival, the disappearance of glaciers erases something less tangible but equally profound. For indigenous peoples and mountain communities across Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Pacific, glaciers are sacred. Their melting erodes traditions, rituals, identity and cultural heritage bound to mountain landscapes for centuries.
While there is still time to act, global responses remain fragmented and inadequate. That’s why the United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation – a clear reminder that preserving these frozen ecosystems means protecting our future.
To ensure food and water security from the peaks to the plains, a bold shift in policy, investment and governance is urgently needed.
Broadly speaking, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, improving water management, and strengthening early warning systems, adaptative agriculture and sustainable agrifood systems are necessary.
We need to turn the challenges posed by melting glaciers into opportunities to the benefit of all.
Agriculture, both a major water user and a key sector for adaptation, can itself be a solution when developed sustainably. Techniques like terrace farming, agroecology, agroforestry and crop diversification – practiced by mountain communities for centuries – help preserve soil and water, reduce disaster risk and support livelihoods. Such adaptation efforts should be inclusive, drawing on indigenous peoples’ knowledge and addressing root vulnerabilities like poverty and gender inequality.
We must also mobilize investments in water and agricultural infrastructure. This includes more climate finance to support vulnerable mountain communities that struggle to access training, funding and innovation.
In addition, governments need to align strategies, policies and plans to address this critical nexus between water, agriculture and climate resilience. Mountains are often absent from national climate policies and global adaptation frameworks. We need policies and collaboration that address glacier-fed water systems, cross-border cooperation, and risk-sharing and early warning mechanisms – especially as rivers fed by glaciers often span multiple countries. This also includes reviewing basin-wide water allocation strategies, plans and investment in infrastructure to improve water use efficiency, and step up glacier monitoring and research.
Preparing for a world with fewer glaciers and less of their precious water requires innovation and coordination. In Kyrgyzstan, FAO has been helping experts construct artificial glaciers – ice towers created by spraying mountain water and that gradually melt in summer. In the region of Batken alone, this initiative has helped store over 1.5 million cubic meters of ice, enough to irrigate up to 1,750 hectares.
In Ladakh, India, the social enterprise Acres of Ice has developed automated ice reservoirs to capture unused water in autumn and winter and freeze it until spring. In the Peruvian Andes, a community-based initiative is addressing the deterioration of water quality from minerals exposed by receding glaciers through a natural filtration system using native plants.
But far more needs to be done, together. Glaciers matter because water matters. To ignore their rapid retreat is to gamble with global food and water security.
(The author is Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
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