When Water Becomes a Decision: What Denmark Teaches Us About the Future of the Alps and the Himalaya

The Himalaya and the Alps are often referred to as the water towers of the world. Both mountain systems supply water to hundreds of millions of people downstream and act as natural regulators of the hydrological cycle. Yet these towers are now literally melting.

Glaciers that for centuries functioned as slow and reliable natural reservoirs are rapidly losing mass.

As a result, not only the quantity but, more importantly, the timing of water availability is changing. Water is no longer a stable resource but a dynamic, seasonal, and increasingly uncertain process.

The Water in Alps: From Energy Security to Risk Management

In the Alps, the consequences are already tangible. H

ydropower—long a symbol of Swiss and Alpine stability—is becoming less predictable. Reduced snow accumulation in winter, earlier spring melt, and longer summer droughts require a fundamental shift in water management strategies.

The focus is moving away from maximizing energy production toward integrated risk management.

Notable Alpine examples include:

• Multi-purpose reservoirs in Switzerland and Austria, designed not only for hydropower but also for flood protection, ecological flows, and drinking water supply;

• River restoration projects (e.g. in the cantons of Graubünden and Valais), where engineered channels are replaced by floodplains that reduce flood risk while enhancing biodiversity;

• Local and regional water cooperatives linking mountain communities with downstream cities such as Zurich, raising questions of equity between “water-producing” uplands and “water-consuming” lowlands.

In the Alps, water is increasingly understood not merely as infrastructure, but as a shared resource that requires political negotiation and social governance.

The Water in Himalaya: From Infrastructure to Community Resilience

In the Himalaya, the situation is even more acute. Rapid urbanisation of valleys—most notably in Kathmandu—outpaces the development of effective governance systems, while rural highland communities remain highly vulnerable to droughts, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), and seasonal water scarcity.

Here, community-based and nature-based approaches promoted by ICIMOD and partner organisations are proving crucial:

• Artificial glaciers (ice stupas) in Ladakh (India), low-tech systems that store winter water as ice and release it gradually during spring for irrigation;

• Revitalisation of traditional water systems such as the dhunge dharas (stone spouts) in Nepal, combining cultural heritage with modern hydrogeological understanding;

• Small-scale wetlands and retention systems in mountain villages that capture monsoon water and reduce dependence on unstable glacial sources.

These examples demonstrate that technology alone is insufficient. Resilience is built through local knowledge, participation, and adaptability, not through imported solutions detached from context.

What Can Be Transferred – and What Cannot

Denmark	Alps & Himalaya
Prevention	Adaptation
Stable availability	Seasonal and uncertain water
Institutional regulation	Community governance & local knowledge
Groundwater-based systems	Surface water + glaciers

Transfer, therefore, is not about copying technologies but about translating concepts. Danish prevention becomes risk management in the Alps and community resilience in the Himalaya.

Formal regulation must be complemented by local governance, while nature-based solutions (NbS)—wetlands, floodplains, vegetation-based systems—emerge as a shared denominator across regions.

A New Paradigm: Governing Uncertainty

In mountain regions, water is no longer something that can simply be “engineered.”

It must be continuously negotiated and managed as a process. Future-oriented water governance requires:

• active participation of local communities,

• recognition and integration of local and indigenous knowledge,

• systematic use of nature-based solutions,

• and adaptive management that treats uncertainty not as a failure, but as a starting condition.

This is the language spoken today by ICIMOD, WWF, and leading Alpine research institutions—and it is also the lesson Copenhagen internalised decades ago through preventive and integrated water management.

Conclusion

Perhaps the future of water management will not be defined by how efficiently we can purify water, but by how long we can keep it clean—and how fairly we are willing to share it.

According to the UN World Water Development Report, by 2030 global water demand is expected to exceed sustainable supply by up to 40%, not because water disappears, but because governance, timing, and access fail.

Nowhere is this more visible than in mountain regions, where shrinking glaciers, seasonal flows, and competing downstream demands turn water into a question of power, justice, and responsibility.

What Denmark demonstrates is not technological superiority, but temporal intelligence: the ability to act before crisis, to invest in invisible protection rather than visible repair, and to treat water as a common good rather than a commodity of last resort.

The Alps and the Himalaya remind us that such foresight cannot be exported wholesale. It must be translated—through local knowledge, participation, and respect for ecological limits.

Water management, then, is no longer about controlling nature, but about governing uncertainty. It requires us to decide whose knowledge counts, whose risks are acceptable, and whose futures are protected. In this sense, water becomes a mirror of our societies: revealing not only our technical capacities, but our ethical priorities.

The real question is therefore not whether we have the technology to secure water—but whether we have the institutional courage and cultural imagination to choose prevention over reaction, cooperation over competition, and long-term resilience over short-term efficiency.

In a warming world, the most advanced water strategy may be the one that understands when not to intervene, when to listen, and when to act together.

Sources / Further Reading

Alps / Europe

• Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN): Climate Change and Hydrology in Switzerland

• European Environment Agency (EEA): Climate change impacts and adaptation in Europe

• UNESCO (2019): The United Nations World Water Development Report – Leaving No One Behind

Himalaya / ICIMOD

• ICIMOD (2019): The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment

• ICIMOD (2023): Water, Ice, Society, and Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

• WWF (2020): High Mountain Water Towers in a Changing Climate

Nature-Based Solutions & Governance

• European Commission (2021): Nature-based Solutions and Re-naturing Cities

• World Bank (2018): Building Climate Resilience in Mountain Regions

• IPCC AR6 Working Group II (2022): Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Denmark / Integrated Water Management

• Danish Ministry of Environment: Groundwater Protection and Water Governance in Denmark

• OECD (2015): Water Resources Governance in OECD Countries