NEW DELHI, 24 Sep: The inaugural Himalaya Commons Dialogue, convened by the Council for International Economic Understanding (CIEU) and Dalberg Advisors under the Bharat Climate Forum (BCF), on Tuesday opened here with a warning that climate change and unplanned development are pushing the Himalayan ecology past safe limits.
The event was inaugurated by BCF president Ashwani Mahajan, BCF convener Meenakshi Lekhi, and RSS Paryavaran Sanrakshan Gatividhi national convener Gopal Arya.
Discussions were held against the backdrop of recent flash floods in Nepal and focused on ecological security, economic resilience and cross-border cooperation.
Jagjeet Sareen, regional director for Asia Pacific, Dalberg Advisors, said the Himalayas have always been a high-risk landscape. "Climate change and unplanned development interacting with that instability has grave consequences. Development is not optional for mountain communities, but can we deliver that development without exceeding the region's ecological thresholds?" he said.
The Indian Himalayan region holds about 36 percent of the country's forest cover and contributes around 63 percent of its water-flow budget. Scientists at the dialogue stressed the need for updated cryosphere assessments.
Dr Anil Kulkarni of the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, IISc Bangalore, said environmental impact assessments must now account for a changing cryosphere, including impacts on hydropower. Prof SP Sati of VCSG Uttarakhand University of Horticulture and Forestry called for mapping of hanging glaciers, describing them as a widespread and under-studied hazard.
Former NDMA adviser Safi Ahsan Rizvi emphasised on coordination and planning among agencies, rather than post-disaster response. On livelihoods, former RBI central board director Satish Kashinath Marathe urged small processing units to locally produce horticulture and medicinal plants, with capacity-building for mountain communities.
On infrastructure, former PMO adviser Bhaskar Khulbe said construction in hill towns must draw on local architectural knowledge suited to terrain. Ramesh Negi, president, Integrated Mountain Initiative and former chief secretary of Arunachal Pradesh, cautioned against hydro projects that place excessive pressure on fragile ecology.
P Subramanyam, former PCCF and head of forest force, Arunachal, said the state embeds climate resilience across departments, rather than assigning it to a single agency.
Speakers underlined that the Himalayas are a regional system: source of 10 major Asian rivers, supporting about 240 million people in the mountains and 1.65 billion downstream.
Hemang Jani of the World Bank Group said resilience should be treated as a regional public good. Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran warned against treating shared natural assets as private property. Alenka Smerkolj, secretary-general of the Alpine Convention, pointed to a small, trusted secretariat as a model for building political cooperation.
ICIMOD director General Pema Gyamtsho said trans-boundary cooperation is more urgent than ever. CDRI's Ranjini Mukherjee cited work with Bhutan on earthquake preparedness as replicable across the region.
In his valedictory address, veteran BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi asked whether current consumption patterns can be sustained with finite resources, and called for restoring balance in the relationship between development and nature.
