Glacial loss results in cascading planetary consequences, and these glacier funerals from Okjökull to Yala demand urgent climate action.
Image Source: Pexels
With rising global mean temperatures vis-à-vis increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the future of the world’s glaciers appears bleak. The recent collapse of the Birch glacier in Blatten, Switzerland, and the ceremonial funeral of the Yala glacier in Nepal echo the elegies of a changing climate and uncertain futures. An analysis of glacier mass loss over the past two decades suggests that the trend is likely to persist, regardless of emission reductions. More than symbolic losses, the retreat of glaciers—often considered sentinels of climate change—is a signal for massive ecological cataclysm, water crisis, and the crumbling of the cultural milieu.
Glaciers store nearly 69 percent of the world’s freshwater as well as sustain mountain ecosystems, wetlands, and biodiversity hotspots. Within the Himalayas alone, there are an estimated 15,000 glaciers with their meltwater feeding major rivers such as the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yamuna, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Yangtze, and Yellow River. This supports the freshwater needs of about 1.3 to 1.5 billion people downstream. Large ice sheets, like those in Antarctica and Greenland, play a significant role in the global climate system by regulating ocean currents and cooling the atmosphere through the albedo effect (reflecting sunlight). With rising global temperatures, these ice reserves are melting, resulting in rising sea levels.
Melting glaciers can also disrupt ocean circulation patterns (for example, the slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), which could destabilise weather systems far beyond glacial regions, including inundation of coastal cities and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF) in the mountains, endangering communities and displacing millions.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global mean sea level has risen approximately 20 cm since 1900, 10 cm since 1971, increasing to 4 mm per year since 2006. Melting glaciers can also disrupt ocean circulation patterns (for example, the slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), which could destabilise weather systems far beyond glacial regions, including inundation of coastal cities and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF) in the mountains, endangering communities and displacing millions. Compounding this crisis is the destruction of the natural climate archives, as the frozen layers of glaciers provide increasing evidence of the planet’s changing temperature and atmospheric composition.
In this context, it is imperative to reflect on how we can move beyond reactive crisis management to long-term, integrated planning, addressing water governance, disaster preparedness, food security, cultural heritage protection, and transboundary cooperation in glacier-fed ecosystems.
Slovenia and Venezuela present a grim benchmark as the first two countries that have completely lost all their glaciers. Several other countries are facing a similar challenge in rapid succession. Austria’s largest glacier—the Pasterze Glacier—has lost over half of its volume since 1851, and ground measurements have shown that the glacier tongue has receded by 290 m between 1984 and 2000. The Gangotri Glacier in the Indian Himalayas—the lifeline of the sacred Ganges River—has retreated by over 3 kilometres since 1817, posing hydrological risks for millions. Located near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Furtwangler Glacier, one of the few last remaining equatorial glaciers on the continent, is projected to vanish by 2030. Bolivia’s Chacaltaya Glacier, which was an 18,000-year-old ice cap, has melted entirely, signalling a warning for the disappearance of the remaining glaciers in the Andes in the coming decades.
Slovenia and Venezuela present a grim benchmark as the first two countries that have completely lost all their glaciers.
In 2022, a collapse along a median crevasse, partly filled by a massive volume of meltwater with temperatures reaching 10.7 °C, caused the Marmolada Glacier in the Italian Dolomites to cave in, triggering an ice avalanche and resulting in the death of 11 mountaineers. The most recent collapse was of the Birch Glacier in the Swiss Alps in 2025, when 9 million cubic metres of rock and ice crashed into the valley, wiping Blatten village off the map. The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment Report also warns that even with ambitious global efforts, one-third of Himalayan glaciers could vanish by the end of the century. These glacier losses are not isolated events but planetary and political, representing a global pattern of irreversible change driven by GHG emissions and warming temperatures.
Glacier protection is more urgent than ever, and while some countries are experimenting with glacial preservation, including glacier blankets in Switzerland and afforestation projects in the Tibetan Plateau in China, these efforts remain fragmented and limited in scope. Legislative actions such as Argentina adopting the world’s first National Glacier Protection Law in 2010 and the French government establishing a natural habitat protection zone for Mont Blanc in 2020 are welcome steps in the right direction. Furthermore, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), acknowledging this urgent need, has declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. While these efforts taken together mark a turning point, addressing the irreversible glacial loss and its cascading effects requires a deeper look at current growth models, resource extractivism, and climate governance.
Glacier protection is more urgent than ever, and while some countries are experimenting with glacial preservation, including glacier blankets in Switzerland and afforestation projects in the Tibetan Plateau in China, these efforts remain fragmented and limited in scope.
Glacier loss represents the crumbling of the world for many indigenous and mountain communities, for whom glaciers are not just physical landforms but are embedded in their cosmologies. The mainstream materialist framing of climate change contrasts with their epistemic view of glaciers as sacred beings, protectors, ancestors, and deities. For example, for the African Chagga tribe dwelling at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, the mountain’s ice cap is a bridge between their earthly realm and the divine. The local Quechua prophecy in the Peruvian Andes connects the disappearance of snow from Mount Ausangate with the end of the world. In the Nepal Himalayas, the Sherpa community view the melting of glaciers as a reprimand for moral transgressions. Loss of such realms inflicts cultural and spiritual trauma, for which the expression of grief is emerging as a form of cultural, political, and moral resistance.
For example, in May 2025, Nepal held an ice funeral for the Yala glacier, which had shrunk by 66 percent since the 1970s. The ceremony was attended by Buddhist monks, government officials, climate scientists, and local communities. Yala Glacier is the fifth glacier to have a glacier funeral in the world after the Okjökull Glacier (Iceland), Ayoloco Glacier (Mexico), Clark Glacier (USA), and Basòdino Glacier (Switzerland). However, the question remains: Can such acts of mourning themselves become spaces to trigger climate action, challenging the structures that have made such losses inevitable?
Yala Glacier is the fifth glacier to have a glacier funeral in the world after the Okjökull Glacier (Iceland), Ayoloco Glacier (Mexico), Clark Glacier (USA), and Basòdino Glacier (Switzerland). However, the question remains: Can such acts of mourning themselves become spaces to trigger climate action, challenging the structures that have made such losses inevitable?
Drawing from Derrida, it can be argued that these are merely performative acts of climate resistance that invoke memory, confront political inaction, and demand accountability for irreplaceable losses. Mourning as an emotional response is inherently performative, and when applied to climate grief, glacier funerals appear more than just symbolic gestures. Studies have shown that the media coverage of the Okjökull Glacier funeral became a global symbol illustrating the real, emotional, and inherent dimensions of climate change. It played a critical communicative role, garnering international resonance and becoming a catalyst for global climate action and civil society movements.
Glacier funerals, in the Anthropocene, are emerging as collective acts of reckoning that transform mourning into a form of resistance, revealing what hegemonic power systems and carbon capitalism aim to conceal. They force us to acknowledge and confront the extractive growth paradigms and other causations that have rendered such losses inevitable. However, addressing this loss demands a shift from fragmented responses. Glacial retreat and its cascading impacts must be integrated in national policies and international dialogues on climate change and disaster risk reduction, with the participatory engagement of the mountain communities as planning partners. Equally imperative is transdisciplinary cryosphere research that translates research findings into actionable planning and policy measures. Glaciers must be recognised as planetary commons, and ethical stewardship for their protection must be promoted.
Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with the Urban Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with ORF’s Urban Studies Programme. Her research interests span the intersections of environment and development, urban studies, water governance, Water, ...
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