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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Minister for Climate Change Dr. Musadik Malik warned the international community on Sunday that accelerated glacier melt in the Hindukush-Karakorum-Himalaya (HKH) Mountain range is placing millions at risk, state media reported. 

Pakistani officials and experts have warned that unusually high temperatures in the country’s northern areas are resulting in the rapid melting of glaciers. Islamabad has highlighted that this prolonged melting phenomenon could lead to water shortages and threaten lives in the longer run. 

Pakistan is home to more than 7,253 known glaciers and contains more glacial ice than any other country on earth outside the polar regions. Almost all these glaciers lie in the northern region of Gilgit-Baltistan and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“Pakistan has urged the international community to act swiftly to protect the rapidly deteriorating cryosphere, warning that accelerated glacier melt in the Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalaya (HKH) region is placing millions at increasing risk,” state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported. 

Dr. Malik was speaking at a virtual high-level dialogue during the ongoing COP30 summit in Belem, Brazil. The minister said the world is witnessing “unprecedented” changes across glacier systems, permafrost zones and snow-covered regions.

“He warned that these shifts are already disrupting water supplies, food production and the safety of mountain communities,” APP said. 

Glaciers are an essential source and provide around 70 percent of fresh water for Pakistan that flows into the rivers, supplying drinking water to humans, ecological habitats and for agricultural activity, and even powers electricity.

Dr. Malik said the HKH— often referred to as earth’s “Third Pole,” is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, threatening the largest freshwater store outside the polar regions.

Participants from Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Nepal and Bhutan at the conference called for stronger regional frameworks for scientific cooperation, improved early-warning systems and targeted investments to boost community preparedness,” the state-run media said. 

Pakistan, despite contributing less than 1 percent to global greenhouse gas emissions, is counted among the countries that are at most risk from climate change. 

Heavy rains, coupled with the melting of glaciers in 2022 submerged a third of the country at one point. The cataclysmic floods killed at least 1,700 people, affected over 33 million and caused damages of over $30 billion, Islamabad estimated. 

Pakistan also saw a deadly monsoon season this year, with heavy rains and the melting of glaciers killing over 1,000 people from late June onwards. Floods in the eastern Punjab province destroyed large swathes of crops and affected over 4.6 million people in late August.