What is happening
Al Jazeera·August 2026
What is a glacial collapse, and how common is it?
A section of glacier broke away above the Lhende river in Tibet. The ice and rock dammed the river, and when the blockage gave way the surge tore into Nepal’s Rasuwa district. The Trishuli rose nine metres in thirty minutes.
ICIMOD·March 2026
Himalayan glaciers are losing ice at double the rate since 2000
Fifty years of monitoring across the Hindu Kush Himalaya. Up to 27 metres of ice thickness gone since 1975, and nearly two billion people downstream. Bhutan is named as one of the region’s blind spots, largely unmonitored.
World Economic Forum·December 2024
What is the Third Pole, and why does it matter?
The Hindu Kush Himalaya holds the largest body of fresh water outside the poles, and the rivers that begin there feed close to two billion people. Its snow is also in the wheat, maize, rice and sugar most of the world eats, whether or not they have heard of it.
What you can do
World Resources Institute·October 2025
Nineteen ways to help the climate, ranked
Ranked by evidence rather than by what feels virtuous. Living car-free, flying less and switching to renewable energy at home come out top; going car-free is 78 times more effective than composting. The world’s largest climate survey also found that 80% of people want their countries to do more.
Project Drawdown·November 2024
Beyond voting: how to take citizen action for the climate
Acting as a citizen rather than as a consumer. How to work out where your concern fits alongside everything else happening around you, who your unlikely allies are, and how to make the case without being tone-deaf to the rest of it.
Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment·2026
2026 is Singapore’s Year of Climate Adaptation
Closer to home. The SG Eco Fund has five million dollars for community-led projects on heat resilience, flood protection, water conservation and local produce, open year-round, and the National Adaptation Plan is open to public comment.
The wider problem
National Geographic·September 2026
Nepal’s glaciers will flood again. Can scientists predict the next one?
As the Himalaya thaws, ground that held for centuries is coming loose. The same happened above the Swiss village of Blatten in 2025, buried under twenty million tons of rock and ice. Nobody there died: the glacier had been watched since the 1990s, and the village was evacuated nine days before it fell.
Bhutan and its glaciers
The Bhutanese·September 2025
Thorthormi Lake and the growing risk of glacial floods
The moraine wall holding Thorthormi apart from Raphstreng has thinned from 45 metres to 33. A siphon is being trialled that needs no fuel and can work through winter, because the lake no longer freezes solid.
UNDP Bhutan·
Living in constant fear of a glacial lake outburst flood
Lunana, a remote highland community nestled among glaciers, where climate change is an everyday reality.
UNDP·
Glacial lake floods prevented in Bhutan
Every year from June to September, between two and three hundred people trek to Thorthormi glacial lake to drain water from it by hand, with pickaxes and shovels.
UNDP Bhutan·
Dwindling cordyceps and a bleak future for Lunana’s women
Lunana has warmed a great deal in the last decade, and the cordyceps harvest that sustains its households is disappearing with the cold.
Eurac Research·
Training Bhutanese experts to analyse climate risk
A research team travels to Bhutan to train local experts, and returns with the view that the Himalayan state has a great deal to teach.
BBC·
Melting glaciers in Bhutan
Ade Adepitan visits Bhutan to see the effect of rising temperatures on its glaciers, and the danger that poses downstream.
Worth your time
Laya, Gasa·Every October
Bhutan Royal Highland Festival
Where the film was made. Founded in 2016 under the Royal Vision, it gathers highland communities from eleven gewogs across ten dzongkhags, whose way of life depends on the ice above them.
Craig Leeson and Malcolm Wood·2022
The Last Glaciers film
Filmed over four years in twelve countries, on the relationship between climate change, mountain environments and glaciers. From the director of A Plastic Ocean.
A visual story of Bhutan’s glaciers, valleys and people
What is threatening Bhutan’s glaciers, and the people who depend on them.