The Himalayan states and Union Territories produce roughly 4.5 per cent of India’s gross domestic product, but that does not capture their importance. Recent work by Systemiq, in partnership with the Integrated Mountain Initiative, estimates that more than 20 per cent of national output depends on the Himalayan ecosystem. This estimate includes the wheat and rice of the Indo-Gangetic plain irrigated by Himalayan rivers, the tea estates of Assam and Bengal, hydropower in the Northeast, and the pilgrimage economies downstream.
India has several agencies to safeguard the Himalayas. The National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem runs climate cells in the Himalayan states. The NITI Aayog set up a Himalayan State Regional Council. The National Disaster Management Authority has a glacial lake committee and the Central Water Commission now monitors 2,843 glacial lakes and water bodies. Each of these entities is responsible only for its own area. No institution tracks — or is accountable for — the resilience and prosperity of the Himalayan system as a whole.
The benefits of a new road, a hydropower project, or a tourism corridor are local and immediate. The risks they add to a slope or a river basin are delayed and shared downstream, often in another state. That is a structural gap. Conservation, resilience, and growth across the Himalayan ecosystem must, therefore, be managed in an integrated manner, with the cost of unsafe choices visible to those who make them.
Conservation protects the glaciers, springs, forests, and watersheds on which water, food, and energy security downstream depend. Resilience anticipates risks that can no longer be avoided and reduces them through better intelligence, risk-based planning, and early action. Regenerative growth builds economic activity that works with the mountains, from higher-value tourism to nature-positive infrastructure. Systemiq identifies 10 such transitions, from spring restoration to artificial intelligence-driven disaster intelligence, and estimates roughly ₹8 of adjusted return for every rupee invested.
The idea of an integrating institution has a long lineage. An expert group chaired by S Z Qasim recommended a Himalayan Development Authority and a dedicated Himalayan fund in 1993. In 2018, NITI Aayog called for a Himalayan Authority for coordinated development and set up the Regional Council in response. India has understood this need for three decades, but we have not yet built an institution with the incentives, information, and financial leverage to make integration real. An empowered Himalayan Development Authority (HDA) can be that institution: Accountable for the resilience of the whole system, with a professional secretariat, deep scientific capability, and predictable funding.
The HDA should have a dedicated multi-year funding channel, combining budgetary support, user charges, payments for ecosystem services, and dedicated levies. Its financing should be conditional on projects meeting common Himalayan risk standards. Land use, forests, water, and transport infrastructure sit across state, concurrent and Union jurisdictions, while parts of the Northeast have Constitutionally protected tribal institutions; the HDA would override none of them. Its value would come from common risk standards, capital allocation, and system-wide information.
The HDA must work across borders, because the Himalayan system does. Glaciers, rivers, and disaster risk flow between India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and the wider Hindu Kush Himalaya spans eight countries. Cooperation with Nepal and Bhutan is deepest, so joint action on water, glacial monitoring, and early warning should begin there, while scientific cooperation and data sharing with all eight countries should continue through the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, an intergovernmental organisation working on sustainable mountain development.
The government cannot protect the Himalayas by itself. Those who conserve a forest or a watershed in the hills are not paid for the water and flood protection they provide to the plains. We propose a Himalayan Catalyst, outside the government, to fix this: It would design payments for stewardship and blend public, philanthropic, and private capital behind them. On tourism, for instance, it could bring states, communities, operators, and investors together around a model that raises local jobs while directing more visitor revenue to the landscapes visitors come to see.
The Himalayas are one ecological system needing differentiated solutions: Ladakh, Uttarakhand, and Sikkim share a mountain system but have profoundly different ecologies, economies, and institutions. What they can share is an institution accountable for the whole. Governments, businesses, and philanthropy should build it now, before the next disaster makes the case. Viksit Bharat cannot be built on a foundation that is melting.
The writers are, respectively, senior director at Systemiq; and president, Everstone Group, and visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics
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