India has long treated the Himalayas as scenery, frontier and source of water. It now needs to treat the majestic mountains as something more consequential: critical economic infrastructure. The distinction matters because a deteriorating mountain ecosystem can impose costs far beyond the states in which the damage occurs. Glaciers across the Himalayan region are losing mass at an accelerating rate. That does not translate into a simple story of rivers running dry tomorrow. The immediate problem can be the opposite: unstable slopes, expanding glacial lakes and sudden floods.

The long-term danger is more profound. Once glaciers lose mass, the rivers they feed will increasingly become dependent on increasingly erratic snowfall and rainfall. For India, this is an economic problem disguised as a geographical one. Himalayan water supports agriculture, hydropower, tourism and the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Wheat and rice cultivation in the plains, electricity generation in mountain states and the enormous pilgrimage economy all depend, directly or indirectly, on the stability of this water system. Any serious disruption will therefore be reflected in food prices, electricity costs, infrastructure losses and public........

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