The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) is a vast, interconnected mountain system, not a single range, that stretches approximately 3,500 km across all or part of eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. This geographical concept is often called the "Third Pole" because its extensive snow and glacier ice store the largest volume of frozen water outside the Arctic and Antarctic. The HKH is the source of ten major Asian river systems, including the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra, which provide water and ecosystem services to a downstream population of around 1.9 billion people.
The concept of the HKH as a unified region for development and conservation gained institutional traction with the founding of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in 1983. ICIMOD, an intergovernmental knowledge and learning center based in Kathmandu, Nepal, was created to promote regional cooperation and improve the livelihoods of the region's approximately 240 million mountain inhabitants. The mechanism for cooperation works through ICIMOD's role as a platform for its eight regional member countries, focusing on knowledge generation, research, and policy implementation for sustainable mountain development.
The HKH connects to critical international concepts like the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as the region is warming faster than the global average, threatening its cryosphere and water resources. A significant recent development is the 2020 HKH Call to Action, approved by all eight HKH countries, which led to the creation of the HKH High-Level Task Force. This Task Force was established to monitor progress on the Call to Action and assess the potential for a formal institutional mechanism to strengthen regional cooperation, signaling a recent, high-level commitment to collective action on shared environmental risks. Furthermore, ICIMOD and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed a memorandum of understanding to support the implementation of the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) under the Paris Agreement in the HKH region, aiming to strengthen climate reporting and action between 2025 and 2028.