Enhancing Climate Actions in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Readiness and Access to Climate Finance

Photo credit: Jitendra Bajracharya/ICIMOD

Background

The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) is a critical global asset whose glaciers, rivers, and ecosystems sustain over 240 million people directly and nearly 2 billion people downstream. However, this region, also known as the “Third Pole,” is now warming at twice the global average – putting lives, livelihoods, and biodiversity at risk. Glaciers are retreating at unprecedented rates, extreme weather events are intensifying, and the risk of irreversible ecological damage looms large. Meeting this escalating challenge will require an estimated USD 11.7 trillion in climate adaptation and mitigation investments in the HKH by 2050.

While ICIMOD’s regional member countries (RMCs) have made ambitious climate commitments under the Paris Agreement through their national adaptation plans, current climate finance flows remain grossly insufficient, fragmented, and rarely tailored to the unique challenges of the mountain context. At the core is a systemic readiness gap: limited institutional capacity, timely updated information on global funds and procedures, weak project pipeline, and weak cross-border coordination are preventing the RMCs from accessing and absorbing climate finance at the scale and speed required.

ICIMOD, as a regional knowledge centre, seeks to support RMCs to bridge the gap between climate ambition and climate action by catalysing investments, capacities and cooperation networks to build climate–resilient future. This regional consultation brings together participation from RMCs, policy makers, climate finance experts, and global funds with a shared purpose of identifying gaps, needs, opportunities, and measures for enabling a reliable access to climate finance in the HKH and attracting tangible climate finance into the region.

Objectives

This two-day regional consultation aims to:

• Take stock of the current climate finance landscape in the HKH – its needs, flows, and gaps and launch ICIMOD knowledge product – the Climate Finance Synthesis Report and country profiles to inform evidence-based dialogue and decisions.
• Facilitate cross-country exchange on institutional readiness, bottlenecks, and best practices for mobilising climate finance at national and regional levels.
• Inform RMCs and stakeholders on opportunities, reforms, and procedures on accessing funds from global climate finance and funding opportunities.
• Co-develop actionable strategies on access to finance and regional climate action, including ideation of concrete country- and regional proposals, that align national priorities with regional and global climate funds’ frameworks.

Expected outcomes

The consultation is expected to result in:

• Shared understanding of climate finance needs, flows, and gaps across the HKH region.
• Co-developed strategies and way forward to improve institutional readiness to unlock climate finance, particularly through global funds.
• Enhanced capacities and networks to develop project pipelines and/or bankable proposals aligned with national priorities and global funding criteria.