In 2024 – the warmest year on record – the HKH region continued at the frontline of the climate crisis, with a severe decline in its cryosphere, and its communities enduring multiple devastating floods and landslides. Air pollution continued to burden the region, with already poor air quality deteriorating at an alarming rate. Highlights from our work in 2024 include...

In most HKH countries, there are significant gaps in reliable data and information specific to mountain economies and the state of their ecosystems, and an even bigger gap in resilient mountain solutions. Highlights from our work in 2024 include...

ICIMOD is committed to GESI, Climate, and Biodiversity as cross-cutting priorities to be integrated across ICIMOD’s portfolio – with good progress across the Strategic Groups. Gender equality remains a key challenge across RMCs, including in workforce participation and persistent socioeconomic inequalities. In 2024, we made several advances on gender equality and social inclusion (GESI), line with the commitments made in MTAP V. We also took the first steps to carve out what it means to implement climate and biodiversity as cross-cutting issues.

Following the approval of the GESI Policy, specific GESI makers were introduced, the GESI Capacity Development Manual was developed, and staff training on GESI mainstreaming delivered. The Overarching Safeguarding Policy was drafted, incorporating Standard Operating Procedures for child safeguarding, Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) and sexual harassment, and eight safeguarding training sessions for staff were conducted.

Some highlights of GESI progress include strengthening women’s leadership in adaptation through securing 84% women to be the trained Local Resource Persons (LRPs) leading Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA) under the Green Resilient Agricultural Productive Ecosystems (GRAPE) project in Karnali Province. Through the ‘Building Capabilities for Green, Climate Resilient, and Inclusive Development’ (HI-GRID) project, local governments began integrating GESI into DRR planning and budgeting, with some municipalities developing safeguarding codes of conduct. As part of the Himalayan Resilience Enabling Action Programme (HI-REAP), a GESI-Responsive Springshed Protocol Trainer’s Manual was developed to promote inclusive springshed management. Furthermore, a GESI Toolkit for Water Modelling, equipping scientists and practitioners with methodologies for disaggregated data collection and intersectional analysis.

In 2024, we initiated light-touch review processes of these cross-cutting areas and our activities, e.g., understanding how our Interventions link to the commitments made in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). We appointed the Climate and Biodiversity Leads, and took the first steps to define their roles. The intention is that these roles dedicated to cross-cutting issues exist to ensure and cross-check that all our work makes positive contributions and, importantly, has no negative effects on climate change and/or biodiversity loss.


The Climate and Biodiversity Leads, together with our Strategic Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (SPMEL) Unit, reviewed existing standard monitoring documents and guidelines, to develop an ICIMOD-relevant framework and markers for tracking progress on climate and biodiversity. The objective of this framework is to help identify our progress on mainstreaming climate and biodiversity across our portfolio. In addition, we introduced an Event and Travel Management Standard Operating Procedure, where any planned event or field visit that could support climate or biodiversity action automatically triggers a consultation with the Climate and Biodiversity Leads. This process has been used successfully in relation to over sixty events and field visits since its initiation.

With scientists predicting devastating near-term impacts of climate change on people’s water and food security, livelihoods and energy sources, and nature already in rapid decline across the HKH, urgent international action, financial support and regional cooperation is needed to help communities and governments prepare and adapt. We are working to ensure the crises faced by the HKH are met with the commensurate urgency nationally, regionally and globally. Highlights from our work in 2024 include...