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“It is a travesty of climate justice that those least responsible for the crisis are hardest hit.” This statement was made by Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Today, Nepal is living inside this very sentence. 

I come from Jammu and Kashmir, another part of the Himalayas where the mountains are not distant landscapes but part of everyday life. They are the roads we travel, the rivers we cross, the slopes we depend on and landscapes we watch changing. Last year, I wrote about the Chisoti cloudburst in Kishtwar, the devastation that followed, the painful loss of lives and challenges of rescue operations in the mountains. Watching the devastation in Nepal last month, I felt a familiar pain. 

Our Himalayan mountains are changing rapidly because of climate change, and the ecosystems that people have depended on for generations are beginning to disappear. I still remember visiting natural springs in Poonch, J&K, as a child, with my grandparents. When I return to some of those places today, the springs are no longer there.

In J&K alone, scientists have identified 55 glacial lakes vulnerable to Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs), including 10 classified as critically vulnerable. Professor Avtar Singh Jasrotia, head of the Department of Remote Sensing and GIS at the University of Jammu has also flagged accelerated expansion and ice melt at several glacial lakes, including Sheshnag Lake in Anantnag.

The region has witnessed a growing series of climate and geological hazards. Forest fires have affected large areas of J&K, with 926 incidents reported during 2025-26. Land subsidence has been reported in areas like Kalaban village in Poonch, Sunderbani in Rajouri and in Doda, while cloudbursts and flash floods continue to expose communities in the mountainous districts. The Chisoti cloudburst last year that impacted the Mata Vaishnavi Devi route in Katra was a painful reminder of how quickly a disaster in the mountains can overwhelm local infrastructure and complicate rescue and relief operations.

‘Development’ increasing mountain vulnerability

The Himalayan landscape is being altered in ways that can increase this vulnerability. A recent University of Jammu study  found that 28% of the area it assessed falls within high or very-high landslide susceptibility zones, with several vulnerable areas located along major road corridors. Across the mountains of J&K, roads, tunnels and bridges are often presented as symbols of connectivity and development, but their construction also means cutting slopes, removing forests and disturbing natural springs, meadows and pastures on which mountain communities depend.

At the same time, the decline of J&K’s natural water bodies adds to this problem. A recent CAG report found that 518 of 697 lakes in the Union territory had either disappeared or shrunk. The loss of these natural water bodies is particularly worrying in a region already witnessing the depletion of its springs and other traditional........

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