In this brief article, we will underline how the impact of climate change in both countries is creating new imperatives to further strengthen Nepal–Pakistan relations. We will briefly see how the two countries are inseparably connected through mountain ranges, mountain ecosystems, and their water systems.
We will present an overview of the climate-triggered disasters that the two countries are facing, including glacial melt, flash floods, mudslides, heatwaves, and droughts. In addition, we will also examine how slow-onset challenges such as changing precipitation patterns, cropping changes, food security, and resulting migration have begun to affect both countries.
How do these climate challenges affect their economic development—reflected in growing poverty, slow economic growth, urbanization, migration, energy crises, and food insecurity? Are any of these climate change issues transboundary in nature, shared by Nepal and Pakistan with their neighbors like India and China?
Are there any bilateral initiatives between Nepal or Pakistan and their respective neighbors, particularly with India? Finally, how can the countries cooperate and strengthen their climate responses both nationally and internationally?
Historical and Geographical Connections
Historically, Pakistan and Nepal were connected through various trade routes that formed extensions of the ancient Silk Road network. These routes facilitated not only the exchange of goods but also cultural and religious ideas. The northern territories of modern-day Pakistan, particularly Gilgit-Baltistan and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, served as crucial transit zones connecting South and Central Asia with the Tibetan Plateau and, by extension, Nepal.
Born around 563 BCE in Lumbini, in present-day Nepal, the teachings of Buddhism crossed the mountains and entered areas that are now part of Pakistan. This represents a significant historical connection between the regions.
Official diplomatic engagement will require demonstrating clear mutual benefits beyond environmental concerns. Economic diplomacy focused on untapped trade potential between the two countries could serve as an entry point, with climate cooperation integrated as a complementary component.
Ancient Gandhara (in modern-day northern Pakistan) was a major center of Buddhist learning and art that influenced religious development throughout the Himalayan region, including Nepal. The Buddhist archaeological sites in Pakistan, such as Taxila and the monuments of the Swat Valley, share artistic and architectural elements with Nepal’s Buddhist heritage.
This religious connection continues to provide cultural linkages between the two nations and offers potential for heritage tourism cooperation.
Mountain Ecosystems and Geographical Linkages:
Pakistan and Nepal, though not sharing a direct border, are intrinsically connected through the vast mountain ecosystems of High Asia. Nepal is dominated by the Himalayan range, which extends westward into northern Pakistan, where it meets the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, and Pamir ranges. These mountain systems form an ecological continuum, sharing similar biodiversity patterns, vegetation zones, and ecological challenges.
The mountain ecosystems of both countries serve as water towers, supporting downstream populations and agriculture through their extensive glacier- and snow-fed river systems. The snow and glacial meltwaters are distinguishable from each other, but both contribute to hazards such as floods and glacial lake outbursts.
The hydrological systems of both countries are fundamentally connected to the greater Himalayan watershed. While Nepal’s rivers primarily feed into the Ganges system, Pakistan’s northern regions contribute to the Indus River Basin.
Both river systems originate from glaciers and snowmelt in the high mountains, creating parallel dependencies on cryospheric water resources. This shared hydrological vulnerability to climate change represents one of the strongest environmental connections between the two nations.
Shared Climate and Extreme Weather Challenges
Both Pakistan and Nepal face significant challenges related to their glacial environments. The Hindu Kush–Himalayan region contains the largest volume of ice outside the polar regions, and these glaciers are receding at alarming rates due to rising temperatures.
Nepal has 21 glacial lakes classified as Potentially Dangerous Glacial Lakes (PDGLs), posing high risks of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). These include lakes like Tsho Rolpa, Lower Barun, and Hongu, which are considered critically dangerous due to their unstable moraine dams and proximity to downstream settlements.
In northern Pakistan (Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), 33 glacial lakes are identified as hazardous and at risk of GLOFs. These lakes threaten over 7 million people in the region, with recent projects focusing on engineering structures and early warning systems to mitigate risks.
GLOF events increasingly threaten communities in both countries that lie in the path of potential glacial lake bursts. The 2022 catastrophic floods in Pakistan, while primarily caused by extraordinary monsoon rainfall, were exacerbated by glacial melt.
Monsoon Variability and Extreme Precipitation Events:
Climate change has disrupted traditional monsoon patterns in both countries. Both have experienced increasingly erratic monsoon timing and intensity, with some years bringing devastating floods and others, insufficient rainfall. The capacity to manage these extremes is limited in both countries, with insufficient reservoir capacity, flood protection infrastructure, and early warning systems.
The mountainous topography of both countries, combined with increasingly extreme rainfall events, has led to greater frequency and severity of landslides. Nepal’s 2015 earthquake triggered thousands of landslides, many of which remain active and are further destabilized during heavy rainfall. Pakistan’s northern regions face similar challenges, with communities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan regularly affected by debris flows and landslides. As precipitation becomes more extreme and deforestation continues, these hazards are expected to worsen.
Further, while mountain regions face various precipitation-related hazards, both countries also experience increasing heat extremes and drought conditions. Pakistan’s 2022 spring heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 50°C in some areas, represents a new reality of heat extremes that affect both urban and rural populations.
Nepal’s Middle Hills and Terai region have similarly experienced increasing heat stress and drought periods. These conditions affect agricultural productivity, increase water stress, and contribute to health emergencies, particularly among vulnerable communities.
Slow-Onset Climate Challenges
Beyond immediate extreme events, both countries face slow-onset climate challenges. These include gradually rising average temperatures, shifting precipitation timing, advancing plant phenology, and changes to growing seasons. Agricultural communities in both nations report confusion regarding traditional planting times, with formerly reliable seasonal indicators becoming unpredictable. Nepal’s middle hills have witnessed changes in crop suitability zones, with some traditional crops no longer viable at elevations where they were historically grown. Pakistan faces similar agricultural transitions, with heat stress affecting wheat yields in traditional growing regions.
Development Implications of Climate Challenges
Climate change acts as a significant brake on economic development in both Pakistan and Nepal. Recent World Bank assessments suggest that climate impacts could reduce Pakistan’s GDP growth by up to 2.1% annually, while Nepal could lose between 2.2% and 9.9% of its potential GDP by 2050 due to climate impacts.
Both countries face substantial costs for climate adaptation, estimated at $7–14 billion annually for Pakistan and $2.4 billion for Nepal by 2030. These adaptation costs compete with development priorities in education, healthcare, and infrastructure, creating difficult budgetary trade-offs.
Climate impacts disproportionately affect the poor in both countries. In Pakistan, the 2022 floods pushed an estimated 9 million people into poverty, while recurring climate disasters in Nepal regularly undermine poverty reduction gains.
Agricultural households, who form the backbone of both economies (employing approximately 42% of Pakistan’s workforce and 66% of Nepal’s), face increasing livelihood insecurity due to climate variability. The poorest farmers typically have the least diversified income sources and the lowest adaptive capacity, creating a climate–poverty trap that is difficult to escape.
Food Security Challenges: Food security has become increasingly precarious in both countries due to climate impacts. Nepal, despite its agricultural economy, is a net food importer, with climate change further threatening domestic production. Disruptions to traditional cropping cycles, post-harvest losses due to extreme weather, and climatic stress on livestock all contribute to food insecurity.
Pakistan, while historically food self-sufficient in staples, faces growing food security risks, with the 2022 floods destroying over 4 million acres of crops and affecting more than 800,000 livestock. Climate projections suggest wheat yields in Pakistan could decline by 50% in some regions by 2050 if adaptation measures are not implemented.
Both countries also face interconnected water and energy challenges exacerbated by climate change. Nepal, with its tremendous hydropower potential, has prioritized hydropower development as a pathway to energy security and economic growth. However, changing river flow regimes, increased sedimentation from extreme rainfall events, and glacial retreat all threaten the long-term viability of hydropower investments.
Pakistan similarly depends on the Indus system for both irrigation and hydropower, with climate change threatening this critical resource. Both countries face difficult trade-offs in water allocation between energy, agriculture, and domestic use as climate change alters water availability.
Climate-Induced Migration: Climate-induced migration has become increasingly common in both countries. Out-migration from areas experiencing water scarcity, declining agricultural productivity, or repeated climate disasters has accelerated. It is estimated that approximately 500,000 Nepalis leave for foreign employment annually for a combination of reasons in search of better livelihood options.
Pakistan has experienced similar climate-induced mobility, with the 2022 floods displacing over 8 million people temporarily, and many permanently migrating from repeatedly affected areas. Both countries face challenges in managing this mobility, with climate migrants often ending up in informal urban settlements with limited services and employment opportunities.
This has contributed to accelerated urbanization in both countries, as rural livelihoods become more precarious. This rapid, often unplanned urbanization creates new vulnerabilities, as informal settlements frequently develop in hazard-prone areas like floodplains or unstable slopes.
Urban infrastructure in both countries is often insufficient to handle climate extremes, as demonstrated by urban flooding in Pakistan’s cities during monsoon seasons and similar challenges in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley. As climate change drives more rural-to-urban migration, these pressures are expected to intensify.
Transboundary Climate Issues and Regional Cooperation
Climate change is almost always a transboundary issue. For example, air pollution—particularly winter smog and black carbon emissions—affects both countries and has climate implications. Black carbon deposits on Himalayan glaciers accelerate melt rates by decreasing albedo.
While much of this pollution originates from the Indo-Gangetic Plain, affecting both Pakistan and Nepal, addressing the issue requires cooperation with India. Some limited regional initiatives exist through the Malé Declaration on Control and Prevention of Air Pollution, but implementation remains weak.
Likewise, the Kathmandu Roadmap in December 2022 identified air pollution as a critical development challenge hinging on regional coordination between Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan—four countries of the Indo-Gangetic Plain and Himalayan Foothills (IGP-HF region).
Climate change also threatens biodiversity in the shared mountain ecosystems spanning Pakistan, Nepal, India, and China. Several transboundary conservation initiatives exist, including the Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Initiative (involving Nepal, India, and China) and the Hindu Kush Karakoram Pamir Landscape Initiative (involving Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and Tajikistan).
These initiatives recognize that effective biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation require cooperation across political boundaries, as species ranges shift and ecosystems transform due to climate change.
Both countries participate in regional initiatives for weather forecasting and climate information. The Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES) provides forecasting support to both nations, while the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) facilitates knowledge sharing on mountain-specific climate challenges.
However, real-time data sharing during extreme events remains challenging, with geopolitical concerns sometimes overriding ecological or humanitarian imperatives. The potential for expanded regional early warning systems represents a significant opportunity for transboundary climate cooperation.
Shared Watershed Management with India and China: Both Pakistan and Nepal share critical watersheds with their larger neighbors, India and China. Nepal’s rivers flow primarily into India, creating hydropower, irrigation, and flood management interdependencies. Similarly, Pakistan’s Indus River system, while originating partly in China, is governed by the Indus Waters Treaty with India.
Climate change introduces new tensions into these transboundary water arrangements, as changing flow regimes, increased demand, and extreme events complicate traditional water-sharing frameworks.
Nepal has established several bilateral mechanisms with India addressing climate-adjacent issues, including joint committees on inundation and flood management, cooperation on meteorological data sharing, and river training works.
The bilateral Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project, while primarily focused on hydropower and irrigation, includes flood control components that address climate resilience. Similarly, Pakistan works with China on the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which includes energy projects.
Pakistan–India climate cooperation remains limited, constrained by broader geopolitical tensions, though the Indus Waters Treaty has shown remarkable resilience for several decades despite political challenges. It is now under new stress, with India having decided to put it in abeyance.
Operational Pathways: From Vision to Implementation
Transforming climate cooperation between Pakistan and Nepal from concept to reality requires identifying appropriate social carriers, engaging official diplomatic channels, leveraging existing transboundary initiatives, and developing climate resilience irrespective of international funding constraints.
The primary social carriers for this vision are the epistemic communities in both countries—climate scientists, water resource specialists, and disaster management professionals—who already recognize the parallel challenges. As noted earlier, several research institutions in both countries have the technical expertise and international networks to initiate meaningful collaboration.
Convincing official diplomacy to embrace this climate agenda requires strategic framing that demonstrates clear mutual benefits beyond environmental concerns. Economic diplomacy focused on untapped trade potential between the two countries can serve as an entry point, with climate cooperation integrated as a complementary component rather than a standalone agenda.
Similarly, civil society organizations focused on mountain ecosystems in both countries can drive grassroots lessons. The mountain communities themselves constitute another critical social carrier group with direct stakes in climate resilience.
Official diplomatic engagement will require demonstrating clear mutual benefits beyond environmental concerns. Economic diplomacy focused on untapped trade potential between the two countries could serve as an entry point, with climate cooperation integrated as a complementary component.
The existing bilateral Joint Economic Commission could expand its agenda to include climate resilience as essential for sustainable economic development. Diplomatic channels are more likely to embrace climate cooperation if framed within established priorities—food security, disaster management, energy development, and tourism promotion—rather than as a stand-alone environmental agenda.
The importance of community-to-community interactions cannot be underestimated, as they can sometimes serve as the backbone for mutual trust and generate bottom-up ideas and initiatives.
Several existing track-two initiatives offer immediate platforms to advance this cooperation. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), though primarily technical in focus, has convening power across the Hindu Kush Himalayan region and could host dedicated Pakistan-Nepal dialogues on climate resilience.
Academic exchanges between institutions studying glaciology and climate impacts represent an unofficial yet effective channel for deepening bilateral climate engagement without waiting for high-level diplomatic initiatives.
In the current global climate finance landscape, excessive reliance on Western funding mechanisms risks paralysis. Instead, both countries must prioritize climate actions that align with immediate development imperatives and can be initiated with existing resources.
These include incorporating climate resilience into ongoing infrastructure investments, particularly water management systems and transportation networks connecting mountain communities. Harmonizing building codes and engineering standards for climate-resilient infrastructure offers practical cooperation requiring minimal additional resources.
Both countries can leverage their diaspora communities for targeted climate investments in vulnerable regions through mechanisms like Pakistan’s Roshan Digital Accounts or Nepal’s Foreign Employment Bonds, specifically designing climate-resilient investment products.
Regional resource pooling presents another pathway—jointly developing specialized technical capacities in areas like high-altitude meteorology or glacial monitoring systems would be more cost-effective than parallel national efforts.
The climate imperative transcends traditional diplomatic frameworks and funding modalities. Pakistan and Nepal can demonstrate that meaningful South-South cooperation on existential challenges need not wait for external validation or financing.
By focusing on pragmatic, mutually beneficial climate resilience measures that simultaneously advance development priorities, they can chart a path toward greater regional climate cooperation despite global climate finance uncertainties.
Social Carriers and Operational Pathways
The transformation of Pakistan–Nepal climate cooperation from aspirational vision to operational reality requires identifying appropriate social carriers who can champion this agenda across both societies.
The primary social carriers are the epistemic communities in both countries—climate scientists, water resource specialists, glaciologists, and disaster management professionals—who already recognize the parallel challenges facing their nations. Research institutions such as the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Pakistan’s Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC), and Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology represent institutional anchors for this cooperation, particularly given their existing engagement with regional platforms like ICIMOD’s Upper Indus Basin Network.
Civil society organizations focused on mountain ecosystems constitute another critical social carrier group. In Pakistan, organizations like the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme have demonstrated transformative impact in mountain communities through participatory development and natural resource management.
Nepal’s Community Forestry Program represents a global model for community-driven conservation that has reversed deforestation trends while improving livelihoods. The mountain communities themselves represent perhaps the most authentic social carriers, possessing direct stakes in climate resilience and traditional knowledge systems that transcend political boundaries.
The fundamental premise must be that meaningful climate action cannot wait for optimal funding conditions or perfect diplomatic alignment. Pakistan and Nepal face existential climate threats that demand immediate responses based on available resources and existing relationships.
Convincing official diplomacy to embrace this climate agenda requires strategic framing that demonstrates clear mutual benefits beyond environmental concerns. Economic diplomacy focused on untapped trade potential between the two countries can serve as an entry point, with climate cooperation integrated as a complementary component rather than a standalone agenda.
The existing bilateral Joint Economic Commission provides an institutional framework that could expand its mandate to include climate resilience as essential for sustainable economic development.
Diplomatic engagement becomes more feasible when climate cooperation is presented within established priorities such as food security, disaster management, energy development, and tourism promotion.
Track II and Track III initiatives offer immediate pathways for advancing cooperation without waiting for high-level diplomatic breakthroughs. ICIMOD possesses convening power across the Hindu Kush Himalayan region and could host dedicated Pakistan–Nepal dialogues on climate resilience.
Academic exchanges between institutions studying glaciology, meteorology, and climate impacts represent unofficial yet effective channels for deepening bilateral engagement. The Himalayan University Consortium already brings together universities from both countries and provides an existing platform for expanding cooperation.
The climate finance landscape, under shifting global political dynamics, requires a fundamental reorientation away from excessive dependence on Western funding mechanisms toward pragmatic South–South cooperation models.
Since international climate finance rarely supports regional initiatives, both countries must prioritize climate actions that align with immediate development imperatives and can be initiated with existing resources.
Immediate opportunities for meaningful cooperation without international funding include incorporating climate resilience into ongoing infrastructure investments, particularly water management systems and transportation networks connecting mountain communities.
Resource pooling for specialized technical capacities in areas like high-altitude meteorology or glacial monitoring systems would be more efficient than parallel national efforts. Both countries could leverage their diaspora communities for targeted climate investments through mechanisms like Pakistan’s Roshan Digital Accounts or Nepal’s Foreign Employment Bonds, specifically designing climate-resilient investment products.
The fundamental premise must be that meaningful climate action cannot wait for optimal funding conditions or perfect diplomatic alignment. Pakistan and Nepal face existential climate threats that demand immediate responses based on available resources and existing relationships.
By focusing on pragmatic, mutually beneficial climate resilience measures that simultaneously advance development priorities, they can demonstrate that effective South–South cooperation on climate challenges is both necessary and achievable.
(Ali Tauqeer Sheikh)
