Earth’s ice is on fire, with many glaciers becoming extinct by the end of the century. To safeguard our planet’s glaciers, mitigate the environmental and economic impacts of their rapid melting and protect their biodiversity, scientists from more than 20 universities and research institutions worldwide established the Glacier Stewardship Program.

Glacial ice stores 70% of Earth’s freshwater and more
than 200,000 glaciers around the world underpin the food and water security of
billions of humans. But ice is at the frontline of the climate crisis. Predictions
show that even with the most ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, up
to half of the world’s glaciers will disappear by the end of the
century. 

The loss of ice causes rising sea levels,
droughts and famines. Hundreds of millions of lives in the shadow of mountain lands
are destabilized by ice loss. Finally, glaciers are also Earth’s largest freshwater
ecosystems, harboring a unique biodiversity with tens of thousands of microbial
species endangered by glacier loss.

A global initiative to
safeguard our planet’s glaciers

Reducing carbon emissions is
critical to help save glaciers. However, more must be done to help protect ice and
its biodiversity and mitigate the downstream impacts.  

The Glacier Stewardship Program, initiated by EPFL and ETHZ in Switzerland
and Universität Innsbruck in Austria, is a first-of-its kind initiative that will
develop innovative, science-backed strategies to slow glacier melt locally, mitigate
glacier-related hazards, and preserve the microbial biodiversity locked in glacier
ice.

It aligns with the United Nations’ declaration of 2025 as
the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation and runs parallel to the UN Decade
of Action for Cryospheric Research (2025–2034).

Three broad
pillars

This alliance of scientists is committed to tackling the
challenges and consequences of glacier loss through three key
priorities. 

First, in collaboration with communities
and stakeholders, the program will develop novel technical approaches to slow ice
loss at the local scale, and systematically evaluate and test, also in collaboration
with local communities and stakeholders.

Second, it will advance
early-warning systems to better protect communities from glacier-related hazards in
some of the world’s most perilous mountain ranges. 

Finally, the program will establish a unique biobank – a microbial zoo – to
safeguard glacier microorganisms for future generations and harness their power for
mitigating consequences of climate change.

Research professor
John Moore from the Arctic Centre at the University of
Lapland is one of the many researchers involved in the Glacier Stewardship
Program. 

“Mountain glaciers are particularly important
in parts of the Global South both as sources of irrigation water in summer and of
occasional disastrous floods. The idea of actively conserving glaciers builds on
ideas we produced last year for conserving the polar ice sheets, but while the
methods are much smaller scale for these mountain regions, they have similar issues
of local acceptability and potential of unwanted side-effects. Both require
inclusive decision-making and local knowledge to be successful.”

More information:

Arctic
Centre, University of Lapland: 
Reseracher professor John
Moore, john.moore@ulapland.fi, +358 40 019 4850

Research institutions involved in the Glacier Stewardship
Program:
EPFL, Switzerland
CRBIP, Institut
Pasteur, Paris France
Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK
University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Norway
ETHZ, Switzerland
WSL, Switzerland
Universität Innsbruck, Austria
Institute of Tibetan Plateau (ITP) Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),
China
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Norwegian Water
Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), Norway
Aarhus University,
Denmark
Indian Institute of Technology Indore
Graz
University of Technology (TU Graz), Austria
University of Leeds,
UK
Center for Climate Repair, University of Cambridge 
Centre de recherche sur l’environnement alpin (CREALP), Switzerland
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Natural History Museum (NHM),
London, UK
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Northwest Institute of
Eco-Environment and Resources, China
Arctic Centre, University of
Lapland, Finland
Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), France
Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology, Branch Bioanalystics and
Bioprocesses IZI-BB, Potsdam, Germany
Laboratoire Chrono-environnement,
CNRS UMR 6249, Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, France
Stazione
Zoologica Anton Dohr, National Institute of Biology, Italy
Masaryk
University, Department of Experimental Biology, Czech Republic
University of Cambridge, UK
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Roorkee, India