The lakes that should not exist in Pakistan’s mountain ranges

In the valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northern Pakistan, farmers wake each summer wondering whether the mountain above them will hold. It is not an idle fear. Rising temperatures have melted glaciers across mountain ranges like the Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and the Himalayan ranges, forming lakes that now threaten millions of people. These lakes did not exist in their current numbers a generation ago. They are a product of rising temperatures driven by industrial emissions from countries far from Pakistan’s mountains, and they are growing faster than the institutions meant to manage them.
Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)
The numbers are stark. Glacier melt across the three aforementioned ranges has produced 3,044 glacial lakes, with 33 identified as highly vulnerable to Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, or GLOFs. A GLOF is not a slow rise of water. It is a massive flood outpouring that results when the natural barriers holding a lake break — often due to seismic activity, avalanches, or heavy rainfall.
These floods release millions of cubic meters of water and debris in hours. Peak flows can reach 15,000 cubic meters per second. A small mountain stream can become a torrent 50 meters deep, spreading ten kilometers wide across a floodplain. Villages, bridges, farms, and roads vanish before evacuations can begin. From 2018 to 2021, roughly 18 GLOFs struck the region. In 2022, that number jumped to 75. In 2023 alone, authorities recorded 83 events. Each one carved through communities that had done almost nothing to cause it.
A glacial lake outburst flood can release millions of cubic metres of water almost instantly, making early warning critical for saving lives.
Through the @Glof2Pakistan project, 284 early warning systems were installed across high-risk valleys in GB and KP and formally handed…
— UNDP Pakistan (@UNDP_Pakistan) June 8, 2026
The people absorbing this damage are among the least economically protected in the country. In Gilgit-Baltistan, 26.7 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, the figure is 22 percent. These are smallholder farmers, herders, and seasonal laborers with no financial cushion. A single GLOF can erase years of savings in an instant. The Bagrote Valley, home to over 10,000 people, sits under constant threat of an outburst that could swallow the entire valley floor. Beyond the physical destruction, the repeated cycle of floods and extreme heat has produced a lasting anxiety in these communities, a fear, rarely spoken plainly, that the disasters will not stop and that ordinary life will not return.
Paying the price for industrial polluters
The injustice is not subtle.
Pakistan contributes less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it ranks among the ten most climate-vulnerable countries on earth. The United States, European Union, and China together account for roughly half of all historical carbon dioxide emissions. Pakistan holds over 13,000 glaciers, the largest concentration outside the polar regions, whose accelerated melting feeds the floods. The 2025 monsoon season alone affected 6.9 million people, displaced three million, and killed over 1,000, including 275 children. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the moral case plainly in 2023: countries that produced the crisis carry an obligation to fund recovery in countries that did not. That argument has produced some movement in international forums, but far less money than the words suggest.
The gap between pledges and payments is not a technical failure. It is a political choice. At the Glasgow Climate Pact in 2021, wealthy countries pledged to double adaptation finance for developing nations to USD 40 billion by 2025. CARE Denmark’s analysis found that bilateral adaptation support is likely to reach only USD 12 billion, just 30 percent of that target, and may fall further as aid budgets are cut.
The United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany have all announced reductions to their climate finance contributions. Only Denmark, New Zealand, and the Netherlands have explicitly committed to directing at least half of their climate finance toward adaptation, as the Paris Agreement requires. The rest have no binding plan. The Loss and Damage Fund, created at COP27 after years of advocacy by countries like Pakistan, opened its first USD 250 million call for proposals at COP30 in Belém, Brazil. Against Pakistan’s actual losses, that figure is close to symbolic. Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said at COP30 that the Green Climate Fund was mired in bureaucracy and the Loss and Damage Fund had made little real progress. Pakistan continues to borrow through costly multilateral loans to pay for damage it did not cause.
Gaps in responses to GLOFs
Inside Pakistan, the response has its own gaps. The GLOF-II project, a joint initiative between the Ministry of Climate Change and UNDP Pakistan, funded by the Green Climate Fund, aims to build 250 engineering structures and extend early warning systems across 24 vulnerable valleys. When complete, it should allow 95 percent of households in target communities to receive and act on flood warnings, protecting roughly 29 million people.
These are meaningful targets. But the project has run since 2017 and has not prevented disasters across Gilgit-Baltistan. What is planned in Islamabad does not always arrive in a remote valley in Baltistan. A UNESCO review of Pakistan’s flood early warning system found persistent gaps between monitoring agencies and response teams. A warning issued in the capital does not automatically reach a farmer in Upper Swat. When it does arrive, that farmer may have no evacuation route, no shelter, and no trained neighbors to help.
The national Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and its provincial and district bodies form a chain where information stalls at every link. Early warning systems currently cover just 24 valleys across 18 districts against a landscape of over 3,000 lakes spread across dozens of remote ranges.
Federal Minister for @ClimateChangePK Dr. Musadik Malik called on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif today to provide an update on monsoon preparedness.
The PM reviewed the operational readiness of GLOF early warning systems and directed continuous monitoring of high-risk areas. https://t.co/gGLWJs0WJB
— Climate Change & Environment Ministry Pakistan (@ClimateChangePK) May 13, 2026
Human pressure sharpens the risk further. Unplanned tourism, unchecked construction, and persistent deforestation are stripping the natural buffers that once slowed erosion and absorbed runoff. In Hunza and Astore, hotels have appeared near tree lines, with no waste management and no coherent land-use plan. Road construction for tourism has led to significant deforestation and soil erosion across northern valleys. The Gilgit-Baltistan Environmental Protection Agency has recommended a five-year ban on hotel construction in several parts of the Gilgit-Baltistan. That recommendation has not been fully enforced. Tourism brings real income to mountain economies, and local governments face genuine pressure not to restrict it. But every hotel built on a fragile hillside and every stretch of forest cleared for a road leaves an already strained landscape even more vulnerable.
The science has been consistent for over a decade. In the Eastern Hindu Kush alone, the number of glacial lakes rose from 101 in 2000 to 162 in 2020, while their combined surface area expanded from 9.72 to 12.36 square kilometers. The Pakistan Meteorological Department has warned that if warm temperatures persist, the melt rate and GLOF frequency will both increase.
A UN report ahead of COP30 estimated that developing countries need between USD 310 and 365 billion per year for climate adaptation by 2035. Rich nations provided USD 26 billion in 2023. For Pakistan’s mountain communities, that arithmetic is not abstract. In 2024, a GLOF in the Hunza Valley destroyed a bridge connecting two parts of a village and damaged homes and mountain gardens. That bridge was not a convenience — it was a lifeline. It was how families reached markets, schools, and hospitals. Its loss was not a statistic. It was a community cut off.
How to protect people in the future
Pakistan did not cause the climate crisis, but it absorbs some of its worst costs. The glacial lakes forming across its northern ranges are a direct result of emissions from industrialized economies. The communities below them lack the infrastructure, the resources, and often the political voice to demand faster action.
International funding through projects like GLOF-II is necessary but not sufficient. Wealthy nations pledged to double adaptation finance and delivered less than a third of that amount. The Loss and Damage Fund, won after years of advocacy, opened with USD 250 million against losses that run into tens of billions.
Pakistan’s own authorities must treat prevention as a standing domestic priority, not a deliverable tied to foreign grant cycles. Stricter environmental enforcement, honest land-use planning, and full-coverage early-warning systems are not expensive dreams. They are the minimum that the millions of exposed people deserve. The lakes are already there. The question is whether the money, the institutions, and the will to protect people from them will arrive before the next outburst does.