The terrifying mountain collapse that crushed thousands of people in China & Nepal is a clear sign that we’ve entered into an era of warming that is “too hot for ice”. With El Niño set to soar to 3.6°C+ in Nov-Dec this year, we are very far from the safe limit for ice of 1°C.

Also terrifying is the Antarctic Peninsula’s winter heatwave – it was 15°C+ in June when it was supposed to be -6.2°C. If polar heatwaves continue, ice sheet collapse will speed up along with rapid sea level rise … and we are all downstream.

So, this month, we ask what does it take to be water secure in an era of “Water B”? ADB says water security is APAC’s next financial imperative, while we unpack our white paper with HSBC & HKGFA on how to finance water resilience at scale. And because seas are still rising at unprecedented rates, we cover the insidious threat of saltwater intrusion to coastal water security.

We must be more imaginative & daring in building resilience – if we cannot imagine the compounding & cascading scale of the disasters ahead, all our adaptation efforts will be outpaced.

Indeed, this was a key takeaway at ICIMOD’s [edited] 2026 HKH CryoHub & HKH Disaster Risk Reduction Hub held in Chengdu on 24-28 August where China, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh & Bhutan were gathered to discuss how to better coordinate research direction, hazard information sharing, policy engagement and regional collaboration to build resilience in the high mountains.

We too were in Chengdu at the time and it was surreal to be among the HKH region’s top scientists, policymakers & disaster management specialists as they discussed the unfolding disaster.

The collapse was a shocking wakeup call that cryosphere (glacial melt & permafrost thaw) risks are happening today, not tomorrow – no one saw this coming because mountain collapse was not prioritised for monitoring as we didn’t think this would happen at this scale so soon. This collapse was 4x that in Chamoli, India in 2021 and [edited] at least 10x Blatten in 2025.

When mountains are collapsing (see tapping in for why), we can no longer pretend we are living in the same climate we grew up in. It signals a new era of “Climate B” and “Water B”. We must ALL revisit our adaptation & disaster response plans, not just those in the HKH region – “a new baseline” has been set. As Dr. Zhang Qianggong, ICIMOD’s Head of the Climate and Environmental Risks Unit said “infrastructure built for yesterday’s climate is not resilience; it is exposure”.

Because climate risks are rising faster than national adaptation efforts, developmental gains are being reversed, says Vivek Raman, Principal Urban Development Specialist at ADB. So even as ADB’s flagship water security index finds APAC has lifted 2.7bn people out of extreme water insecurity since 2013, around 4bn still live with unreliable services & poor water quality. Is this reversible? Can APAC raise the US$250bn needed per year to 2040 for water & sanitation? Read Raman’s op-ed.

Much more money is needed to build resilience for “Water B”. Water risks are rising yet the current global funding gap for water security by 2040 is ~US$7.5trn. Globally, 1 in 4 cities still face water insecurity and in Asia, 1 in 2 Asians and half the GDP of 16 countries are crowded in 10 major river basins that flow from the Himalayas. Such concentrated risks means financing resilience at scale should be a priority.

As this funding gap cannot be filled by governments alone, CWR, collaborated with HSBC & HKGFA to release a white paper – “Financing resilience at scale: Water conservancy REITs & water asset/revenue backed securities”.

The white paper explores 5 financing instruments raising CNY6.6bn in 2024-2026 from China where the government’s water conservancy spend has grown at a faster rate than military spending since 2015. How can these scale up financing in China? Can they be applied regionally or even globally? Read on.

As Chaoni Huang, HSBC’s Head of Sustainable Finance & Transition Asia says: “water resilience is emerging as one of Asia’s most significant financial risks – not just an environmental issue – but also a significant investment opportunity”. So don’t delay, check out the paper now and contact us if you want to kickstart conversations on new ways to finance water resilience!

One of these financing innovations is China’s first water conservancy REIT – a new way of raising funds for water infrastructure through capital markets. It’s listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and was several hundred times oversubscribed – deep dive into China’s financing innovations.

Just like mountains in the Third Pole are starting to collapse, ice sheets/ shelves/ cliffs too will collapse in the future. When such melt happens, those of us living by the coast are all downstream of the sea level rise this will cause.

MICI – Marine Ice Cliff Instability – which causes rapid sea level rise is not supposed to happen in our lifetime but then again, we never thought the Himalayas which have stood for thousands of years would fall now.

So, Ziyang Cai from CWR zeroes in on a water security threat that is flying under most people’s radar: saltwater intrusion – which only accelerates with sea level rise. When saltwater intrudes deep into the river & passes the freshwater intake point, a city’s freshwater supply may be cut for days. This happened already in Shanghai in 2022 & New Orleans in 2023 – could it happen to your city? Find out more in our 3 things to know and 3 must-do’s for coastal water security.

We are all downstream; ignoring water risks related to melting ice and permafrost from mountains to the oceans puts us all in peril. Ultimately, we will reach limits to adaptation and will have to design strategies for retreat – which areas remain safe from catastrophe? How do we move people away from danger? Are we ready to have these difficult conversations?

Ready or not, tough decisions will have to be made. Attempting to preserve our systems & restore infrastructure built for a climate that will no longer be here is a fool’s errand. Like Professor Horton says, this is the worst weather of our lifetime, but it will be the best our children/grandchildren will see.

It’s time to wake up – dare to imagine unimaginable risks ahead for only then can we figure out how we will survive them. This is the way.