AS the world prepares for COP31, Pakistan has an opportunity to advance a pioneering climate finance agenda that connects the security of the Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) with the survival of Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
The case should be built on the premise that if the international community recognises the exceptional vulnerability of SIDS through dedicated allocations from the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), it should extend comparable consideration to the cryosphere, whose accelerating degradation is a major driver of sea-level rise and a growing source of catastrophic losses across Asia. This should not be seen as a competition between vulnerable regions. It is a call for climate finance that addresses both the people exposed to climate impacts and the physical processes generating them.
Sea-level rise that threatens the very existence of many island nations begins with the cryosphere. Therefore, an effective response must look beyond the coastline to the cryospheric changes driving the rising water.
Two major contributors to global mean sea-level rise are the loss of land-based ice, particularly glaciers and ice sheets, and the thermal expansion of warming oceans. Melting sea ice, by contrast, contributes little directly to sea-level rise because it already floats. This distinction matters because the cryosphere is not a single, uniform system, but its land-based ice stores enormous quantities of freshwater that, when lost to the oceans, raise sea levels.
At COP31, Pakistan should seek a ‘Cryosphere Declaration’.
The policy implication is clear. Financing recovery after coastal flooding, erosion, and saltwater intrusion is essential, but investing in recovery without adequately addressing the drivers of those losses is economically short-sighted. The world must finance protection against sea-level rise while urgently reducing the emissions that accelerate ice loss. Protecting the cryosphere and maintaining the annual cyclical hydrology of melting and replenishment will reduce risks for both HKH countries and SIDS.
Moreover, a cryospheric crisis in the HKH will have continental consequences. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, the river basins originating here support some 1.9 billion people. This is a population whose water, food, energy, and economic security depend substantially on the health of the mountain cryosphere. The UN puts the combined population of SIDS at around 65 million. These populations are not directly equivalent measures of climate vulnerability, but the scale of downstream exposure makes a compelling case for comparable global attention and dedicated finance for the HKH cryosphere.
The HKH’s threats also differ from those of the Arctic. Arctic ice loss is globally consequential, particularly through the contribution of Greenland’s ice sheet to sea-level rise, alongside wider effects on polar ecosystems and climate systems. The HKH, by contrast, combines extensive mountain glaciers, seasonal snow, thawing permafrost, and expanding glacial lakes with densely populated downstream river basins. Its cryosphere is both a water reservoir and a source of rapidly escalating hazards.
The latest UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2026, released last month, warns that global temperatures are set to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Even the lowest overshoot pathway would require global greenhouse gas emissions to fall by 18 per cent by 2030, 45pc by 2035 and 69pc by 2040, relative to 2025 levels. Current national pledges fall far short of this trajectory, while current policies could lead to around 2.8°C of warming this century. This is precisely why climate finance must move beyond treating disasters solely as events to be compensated for after they occur, and connect mitigation and adaptation as part of a dedicated cryosphere funding connecting all three. The existing commitment to a 50pc allocation floor for least developed countries and SIDS during the Loss and Damage Fund’s start-up phase provides an important precedent for targeted support.
At COP31, Pakistan should seek a ‘Cryosphere Declaration’ that recognises the HKH as a global climate-risk priority and establishes a pathway for dedicated cryosphere finance under FRLD, the Adaptation Fund and mitigation financing. The declaration should promote regional scientific cooperation, sustained observation networks and measurable action to reduce climate risks. Diplomacy in building alliances with SIDS and the Alliance of Small Island States, framing the proposal as a common campaign to finance both the sources of climate-related risks and the communities suffering their consequences, will prevent future losses for both SIDS and HKH countries.
The writer is a climate policy analyst.
Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2026
