8:30 Cryosphere Coordination Meeting
Daily coordination meetings and negotiations updates will be held every morning the Cryosphere Pavilion.
Contact: Stefan Ruchti (stefan@iccinet.org) or Pam Pearson (pam@iccinet.org)

10:00 Glacier-Fed Rivers – Building Upstream & Downstream Climate Resilience
Glacier-fed rivers play a critical role in water security, providing vital resources for drinking, irrigation, and hydropower. The cryosphere, which includes glaciers, snow, and permafrost, is undergoing significant change due to global warming, leading to shifts in water availability and timing that profoundly affect lowland communities reliant on these river systems. These changes create a cascade of risks, including increased flooding, drought, glacial lake outburst floods, and landslides.
University of Geneva, Geneva Water Hub, Swiss Embassy in Baku, Bangladesh Embassy in Germany, High Level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters

11:30 Building Infrastructure Resilience in the Mountain Regions: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities
The accelerated rate of climate change has increased the frequency of extreme events like floods and landslides, severely impacting mountain regions and local communities. These events disrupt critical infrastructure—roads, healthcare, and power networks—affecting essential services. Developing adequate infrastructure in these areas is crucial but often exacerbates ecological risks. Costly infrastructure projects face added challenges from these hazards, necessitating balanced development and risk-informed investments. A standardized risk assessment framework, aligned with global climate initiatives, could enhance resilience across vulnerable regions. To address this gap, the Council has developed a scalable framework to assess risks to critical infrastructure from extreme climate events, identifying key drivers and proposing adaptive solutions. The session will explore how such frameworks can be standardized and expanded across mountain regions through global collaboration, focusing on best practices and overcoming challenges in mountain infrastructure resilience.
Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW)

13:00 The Future of Glaciers Relies on Today’s Policies: Global and Local Impacts
The mass loss of glaciers globally significantly impacts sea-level rise, freshwater resources, tourism, culture, and more. Here we discuss the latest glacier projections and how our actions as a society, by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, can reduce the severity of these impacts. These impacts from glacier mass loss are experienced at both global and local scales thus highlighting the utility of global glacier projections in combination with localized work to support adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Carnegie Mellon University, University of British Columbia

14:30 From Ice to Water: The Downstream Effects of Glacier Retreat
The retreat of glaciers has significant impacts on the water cycle and water supply. As glaciers shrink, they contribute less meltwater to rivers and streams, resulting in reduced water availability downstream. This not only affects freshwater supply for drinking and agriculture but also disrupts ecosystems and biodiversity. To adapt, we can implement water conservation measures, invest in alternative water sources, and promote sustainable water management practices. In line with this, a panel discussion will be held focusing on the high-risk area of cryosphere melting and glacier retreat, highlighting the impacts and the IAEA’s efforts, particularly, isotope hydrology role in addressing this issue in Central Asia and beyond. The discussion will also explore implementation actions ahead of the conference in Tajikistan on 2025 International Year of Glaciers Preservation, aiming to strengthen the relationship and pave the way for high-level events at the Dushanbe Conference 2025.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with representatives from the government of Tajikistan, IPCC, WMO, and a meteorological service from Central Asia

16:00 The Zagros Mountains – Water Towers of the Kurdistan Region and the Middle East
The Zagros Mountains that stretch from Iran through northern Iraq to Turkey are lesser known. The climate change impact on the Zagros Mountains’ snow and consequently water resources may put millions of people at risk, in a water-stressed region that experiences very high summer temperatures. A 10-minute film will show how the Zagros snow is vital to maintain the water resources, ecosystem, and biodiversity of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. The film will feature communities facing their village streams drying out, nomads who annually move to the higher slopes for their herds’ summer pastures, and scientists and researchers explaining the importance of snow to replenish aquifers for millions of people in Iraq. The film will be followed by a discussion and Q&A on the science and adaptation, acknowledging the need for partnerships and technical assistance for monitoring and reporting.
Kurdistan Regional Government, Prime Minister’s Advisor on Foreign Affairs and Climate Change for Iraq, University of Kurdistan Hawler (UKH), Mountain Partnership

18:00 The Need for Preventive CDR to Limit Long-term Cryosphere Risks
In addition to drastic emissions reductions, some level of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is required to achieve net zero greenhouse emissions and potentially long-term temperature decline. Emerging research highlights the need for such a warming reversal to limit cryosphere risks for centuries to come. However, CDR strategies come with varying degrees of side-effects affecting multiple sectors. This panel discussion will highlight the various CDR methods and explore their potential and drawbacks. It will also establish the need for a preventive CDR capacity.
IIASA, Climate Analytics, Imperial College London, International Cryosphere Climate Initiative

19:30 Meditation for Mountain Glaciers – A Moment of Stillness in a World of Climate Change
The event will take place multiple evenings this week. A full description can be found on the schedule under Monday Nov. 18.
Guided by meditation teachers from the Brahma Kumaris