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Globally, mountains are the backbone of critical ecosystem services and among the earliest and most sensitive indicators of climate change.
Yet mountain priorities remain significantly underrepresented in national, regional, and international climate finance agenda.
This neglect often overlooks the far-reaching transregional consequences of the climate hazards originating in mountain regions. Consequently, it results miss opportunity for proactive climate action across multiple levels.
In the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region of South Asia, for instance, extreme climate events are annual recurrences now, exacerbating both in frequency and severity with every passing year.
Nearly two billion people in South Asia, or approximately a quarter of the global population, depend on the HKH mountains for their water, energy, food, and livelihood security. Accelerating climate crisis in the HKH, therefore, means that the future of a fourth of the global population is hanging in the balance.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s (ICIMOD) report on the status of climate financing in the region reveals the requirement to be over USD 12 trillion by 2050, amounting to an annual average of about USD 768.68 billion, while the actual inflows are way lower than this.
Multilateral and bilateral climate finance frequently fail to meet the committed levels, and sectors crucial to the region, such as adaptation, agriculture, water management, and disaster risk reduction, remain significantly underfunded despite their critical importance.
“We do not have the luxury of waiting; we have to act now”.
Moreso, when the global mean surface temperature has already soared to 1.48⁰C in 2023-2025, dangerously closer to the 1.5⁰C limit, and the high mountain regions like the HKH, due to their elevated geomorphology, are even closer to the precipice than the rest of the world.
At ICIMOD, our Strategy 2030, Moving Mountains, envisions to transform the HKH into a resilient region where communities benefit from a healthy environment, addressing climate crises and accelerating actions for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a key regional knowledge organisation our goal is to forge strategic collaborations, influence regional policy, drive action, and attract investments for a sustainable transition.
Guided by this vision, our two-day HKH Investment Conference 2026 is designed to unlock capital by strengthening the investment ecosystem. We strive to:
Build a shared understanding of priorities and enabling conditions to foster the flow of investment and climate finance to HKH.
Promote priority bankable projects, pipelines, and practical tools such as blended finance and de-risking to mobilise capital at scale.
Facilitate networking and linkages among investors, development partners, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, and strengthen platforms such as the Investment Working Group (IWG).
This is investing in resilience at scale: investing in climate actions with quantifiable outcomes in water security, disaster risk reduction, and livelihoods; and we solicit your interest and participation in this time critical endeavour.
Supported by the United Kingdom International Development (UKID) through its Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
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