As glaciers shrink and vanish, changes in water flows pose a growing risk to the water, food and livelihood security of billions of people. Credit: FAO

By QU Dongyu
ROME, Feb 12 2026 (IPS)

Glaciers – the world’s hidden water banks – are a source of life for billions. The seasonal melt from mountains and glaciers sustains some of the world’s most important rivers, such as the Indus, the Nile, the Ganges and the Colorado. Those and other mountain-fed rivers irrigate crops, provide drinking water for nearly two billion people, and power electricity generation.

But, as glaciers shrink and vanish, changes in water flows pose a growing risk to the water, food and livelihood security of billions of people.

In the short term, accelerated melting can trigger environmental hazards: flash floods, glacial lake outburst floods, avalanches and landslides.

In the long term, the glaciers as water sources will simply disappear.

By century’s end, most glaciers will contribute far less water than they do today, undermining agriculture in both mountain villages and sprawling lowland breadbaskets downstream.

We need policies and collaboration that address glacier-fed water systems, cross-border cooperation, and risk-sharing and early warning mechanisms – especially as rivers fed by glaciers often span multiple countries

Mountains cover more than a quarter of the world’s land and are home to 1.2 billion people, but these regions are heating up more rapidly than the global average. Mountain communities are especially vulnerable to increasing climate variability and decreasing seasonal water availability for agriculture and irrigation. With often no viable alternative water supply, the loss of agricultural production can lead to climate displacement and greater instability.

Five of the past six years have seen the most rapid glacier retreat on record, and the impacts are already being felt.

Communities from the Andes to the Himalayas are experiencing shorter snow seasons, erratic runoff, and the loss of reliable water. In Peru, dwindling glaciers have slashed crop yields. In Pakistan, reduced snowmelt threatens seasonal planting cycles. Many glaciers have already reached or are expected to reach “peak water” – the point at which meltwater runoff is at its maximum, after which flows will gradually decline – in the coming two or three decades. This means everyone who depends on glacier-fed rivers faces increasing scarcity when population growth will push water demand even higher.

Beyond science and survival, the disappearance of glaciers erases something less tangible but equally profound. For Indigenous Peoples and mountain communities across Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Pacific, glaciers are sacred. Their melting erodes traditions, rituals, identity and cultural heritage bound to mountain landscapes for centuries.

While there is still time to act, global responses remain fragmented and inadequate. That’s why the United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation – a clear reminder that preserving these frozen ecosystems means protecting our future.

To ensure food and water security from the peaks to the plains, a bold shift in policy, investment and governance is urgently needed.

Broadly speaking, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, improving water management, and strengthening early warning systems, adaptative agriculture and sustainable agrifood systems are necessary.

We need to turn the challenges posed by melting glaciers into opportunities to the benefit of all.

Agriculture, both a major water user and a key sector for adaptation, can itself be a solution when developed sustainably. Techniques like terrace farming, agroecology, agroforestry and crop diversification – practiced by mountain communities for centuries – help preserve soil and water, reduce disaster risk and support livelihoods. Such adaptation efforts should be inclusive, drawing on Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and addressing root vulnerabilities like poverty and gender inequality.

We must also mobilize investments in water and agricultural infrastructure. This includes more climate finance to support vulnerable mountain communities that struggle to access training, funding and innovation.

In addition, governments need to align strategies, policies and plans to address this critical nexus between water, agriculture and climate resilience. Mountains are often absent from national climate policies and global adaptation frameworks. We need policies and collaboration that address glacier-fed water systems, cross-border cooperation, and risk-sharing and early warning mechanisms – especially as rivers fed by glaciers often span multiple countries. This also includes reviewing basin-wide water allocation strategies, plans and investment in infrastructure to improve water use efficiency, and step up glacier monitoring and research.

Preparing for a world with fewer glaciers and less of their precious water requires innovation and coordination. In Kyrgyzstan, FAO has been helping experts construct artificial glaciers – ice towers created by spraying mountain water and that gradually melt in summer. In the region of Batken alone, this initiative has helped store over 1.5 million cubic meters of ice, enough to irrigate up to 1,750 hectares.

In Ladakh, India, the social enterprise Acres of Ice has developed automated ice reservoirs to capture unused water in autumn and winter and freeze it until spring. In the Peruvian Andes, a community-based initiative is addressing the deterioration of water quality from minerals exposed by receding glaciers through a natural filtration system using native plants.

But far more needs to be done, together. Glaciers matter because water matters. To ignore their rapid retreat is to gamble with global food and water security.

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FAO is mandated to lead the global observance of International Mountain Day, coordinated through the Mountain Partnership Secretariat, which is financially supported by the governments of Italy, Andorra and Switzerland. The Secretariat collaborated closely with UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization, co-facilitators of the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation 2025.

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Credit: FAO

By QU Dongyu
ROME, Oct 11 2024 (IPS)

This year the theme for World Food Day is “Right to Foods for a Better Life and a Better Future.” It’s a timely reminder that all people have the right to adequate foods. But how do we get from a right to a reality? And why is it so important to think about not just having sufficient food, but also the diversity of diets?

That’s why I speak of “Foods” in the plural, emphasizing this diversity, as well as food availability, food accessibility and food affordability for all. Right now, the world’s farmers produce more than enough food to feed the global population in terms of calories.

Yet around 730 million people are facing hunger due to man-made and natural disasters, including conflict, recurrent weather shocks, inequalities and economic downturns.

Billions lack healthy diets
Another harsh reality is that over 2.8 billion people in the world are unable to afford a healthy diet, which is a leading cause of all forms of malnutrition.

Credit: FAO

We need a greater diversity of nutritious and affordable foods to be available in our fields, fishing nets, markets and on our tables, for the benefit of all.

This is not just about populations’ nutritional requirements, but also about ensuring that our agrifood systems are efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, so that they can be respectful of traditional food cultures and healthy diets based on science and in line with personal preferences.

Another crucial consideration is the long-term health and sustainability of the environment on which we rely to produce these foods and which needs biodiversity to thrive.

The right to foods will not in itself fill stomachs or put more diverse diets on plates. But it does help frame our collective aspirations for the kind of just and equitable world we want to live in. It creates concrete obligations for governments and key partners to fulfil, and it should encourage all of us to do our part to ensure it is realized.

This is the reason for action. Now.

FAO’s role
At the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), we are working hard to turn this right into a reality, even in the face of a range of challenges. In conflict zones, access to foods is being disrupted, leading to malnutrition and hunger.

In these and other hunger hotspots, FAO’s efforts are focused on rebuilding agricultural infrastructure to ensure food availability and accessibility for long-term food security, with all tools and channels.

Aside from such emergency interventions, key FAO programmes such as the Hand in Hand initiative, One Country One Priority Product, Blue Economy and Technical Cooperation Programmes (TCPs) also target medium to long term food security and nutrition across a wide range of countries.

In many places, dietary changes and market concentration driven by globalization have led to increased health issues, including obesity and diabetes. School feeding programmes supported by FAO play an important role in helping address these challenges, as they source food from local farmers and ensure children receive nutritious meals.

In many countries, across all regions, FAO is working with fishing communities and local governments to expand social protection and economic inclusion of the most vulnerable by helping them diversify their production, build alternative income sources and connect to new markets.

Inflation, particularly during periods of economic instability, can make food unaffordable. In some African countries for example FAO’s initiatives include cash transfers to the poorest households, helping them afford food during hyperinflation.

The climate crisis poses a significant threat to global food security. Erratic weather patterns and natural disasters can devastate crops and livestock. For example, in some countries in Asia FAO has introduced climate-smart agriculture techniques to help farmers adapt to changing climatic conditions, ensuring consistent food production.

Furthermore, by working closely with governments, FAO helps develop legal frameworks and has assisted in drafting national policies towards ensuring food security and nutrition for all.

Collective action needed
But it’s not just governments which we call upon to engage in this battle. Collective action can drive substantial change, with global collaboration from all sectors, and all partners – governments, the private sector, academia, civil society, and individuals.

And especially the youth – because a food secure future is their right. They design and decide the future. All calls from the UN Summit of the Future is determined by their actions.

Farmers can make a difference by practising sustainable agriculture that enhances biodiversity and manages natural resources responsibly. Businesses can make nutritious and diverse foods available more affordably.

Academia and civil society can hold governments accountable by collecting data, identifying areas for improvement, implementing scientech solutions and measuring progress towards targets.

Science and innovation including IT, Biotechnology, AI and Digital Agriculture, and others, will be a decisive force for agrifood systems transformation. Finally, all of us as consumers can and should play our role in reducing the “foodprint”, practicing healthy lifestyles, raising our voices to influence decision-making, reducing food waste, and promoting food diversity.

This World Food Day let us renew our commitment to build more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable agrifood systems that honour everyone’s right to varied and nutritious foods.

Together, we can get back on track to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – our collective pledge to take action for people, planet, and prosperity.

We can accomplish this by transforming global agrifood systems to ensure the Four Betters: better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life – leaving no one behind.

Our Actions are our Future.

Dr QU Dongyu is Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

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World Food Day 2024

Credit: UNDP, Paraguay

By Achim Steiner, Inger Andersen and QU Dongyu
ASUNCION, Paraguay, Feb 14 2020 (IPS)

Imagine a forest that covered half of your entire country. A biodiverse forest which supports thousands of species from giant anteaters to armadillos to jaguars. A forest that is home to one the world’s last uncontacted tribes.¹

That forest is in fact a reality in Paraguay, a South American country of seven million people, landlocked between Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. It is home to much of the Gran Chaco forest that is considered the second largest forested landscape in South America — second only to the Amazon rainforest.

And like other countries which are home to the great forests of South America, Paraguay too battled raging wildfires in 2019.

But Paraguay’s portion of the Chaco forest is battling an even more existential challenge. This unique ecosystem, characterised by scrub forests, grassy plains, lagoons, marshes and jungles, is under threat from agricultural expansion, driven by cattle and soy production.²

The region has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. As NASA satellites have highlighted between 1987 and 2012, the forests in Paraguay lost nearly 44,000 square kilometres through conversion to farmland or grazing land. That’s an area roughly the size of Honduras.³

The scale of that destruction is both frightening and untenable.

Paraguay needed to support to reduce deforestation. And partly as a consequence of that destruction, the country was not able to fully realise the massive potential of its forests to support climate change mitigation.

Thus, Paraguay engaged in REDD+, a voluntary process under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which encourages developing countries to contribute to climate change mitigation efforts by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from deforestation and forest degradation. The process also helps to increase the removal of GHGs from the earth’s atmosphere through the conservation, management, and expansion of forests.

Credit: UNDP Paraguay

Since 2011, partners from across the UN System have collaborated closely to support Paraguay’s national REDD+ process through a range of tailor-made initiatives.

They include the UN-REDD Programme (2011-2016) where the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) provided support to Paraguay to submit its first Forest Reference Emission Level of deforestation (FREL).

This collaboration also resulted in a new a National Forest Monitoring System for the country which allows for the reporting of forest carbon — reliable data on forest area and changes to forest area.⁴

Following this, and thanks to support from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility since 2016, Paraguay advanced the elements of the UNFCCC Warsaw Framework for REDD+ – institutional prerequisites that make a country’s emission reductions in the forest sector eligible to exchange for results-based payments.

UN agencies are now jointly collaborating to advise Paraguay on accessing and managing result-based payments from a range of public and private sources thus ensuring robust fiduciary management and compliance with UNFCCC social and environment safeguards.

The first example of this collaboration is Paraguay’s proposal to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) pilot programme for REDD+ result-based payments, which was approved at the GCF board meeting in November 2019.

UNEP will play the role of Accredited Entity for this US $72 million proposal and implementation will be undertaken by the three UN-REDD partner agencies: UNDP, FAO and UNEP. UNDP will build upon the support provided for the development of Paraguay’s National Strategy on Forest for Sustainable Growth and will assist in the implementation of the Strategy’s policies and measures, informed by UNDP’s experience on the ground.

FAO will support improvement of the national forest monitoring system. It will also assist in the application of rigorous methodologies to assess, quantify, monitor, report and verify emission reductions at the national-level.

UNEP will support the definition of incentives to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. It will also boost social and environmental safeguards; and engage in communications and awareness-raising efforts.

Working together for nearly a decade, UN agencies have demonstrated the power of working as one to open the door for Paraguay to access significant international resources to implement its National Strategy on Forest for Sustainable Growth and achieve the mitigation goals set out in the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) – or its “promise” towards the Paris Agreement.

The results of these wide-ranging partnerships are producing dividends. In 2019, Paraguay reported 26.7 MtCO2 of emission reductions – or a reduction of nearly 50 per cent for the forest sector.

We hope that Paraguay can serve as a “beacon state” to thrust countries around the world into further positive action to when it comes to the management of its forests as a nature-based solution to climate change — while also helping them to propel forward a range of related Sustainable Development Goals.

¹ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/10/isolated-brazil-peru-amazon-tribes-remote-protected/
² https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Earth_from_Space_An_island_surrounded_by_land
³ https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92078/deforestation-in-paraguay
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Geography/Land-area/Sq.-km
⁴ https://redd.unfccc.int/fact-sheets/national-forest-monitoring-system.html

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