AS the world prepares for COP31, Pakistan has an opportunity to advance a pioneering climate finance agenda that connects the security of the Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) with the survival of Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

The case should be built on the premise that if the international community recognises the exceptional vulnerability of SIDS through dedicated allocations from the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), it should extend comparable consideration to the cryosphere, whose accelerating degradation is a major driver of sea-level rise and a growing source of catastrophic losses across Asia. This should not be seen as a competition between vulnerable regions. It is a call for climate finance that addresses both the people exposed to climate impacts and the physical processes generating them.

Sea-level rise that threatens the very existence of many island nations begins with the cryosphere. Therefore, an effective response must look beyond the coastline to the cryospheric changes driving the rising water.

Two major contributors to global mean sea-level rise are the loss of land-based ice, particularly glaciers and ice sheets, and the thermal expansion of warming oceans. Melting........

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