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This is a pivotal moment in our history. The world around us is changing and here, on the top of the world, things are changing fast. We are witnessing rapid climate change, biodiversity loss, increased disaster risk, and rising poverty and inequality This strategy for 2023-2030 outlines how we will work to address these challenges and achieve our vision of a greener, more inclusive, and climate resilient Hindu Kush Himalaya.
This is a pivotal moment in our history. The world around us is changing and here, on the top of the world, things are changing fast. We are witnessing rapid climate change, biodiversity loss, increased disaster risk, and rising poverty and inequality.
This pre-formatted version of the strategy for 2023-2030 outlines how we will work to address these challenges and achieve our vision of a greener, more inclusive, and climate resilient Hindu Kush Himalaya. It has been developed in response to a request of our Board of Governors and International Support Group to raise our ambition, with ICIMOD@40 in 2023, and in the face of the climate and environment crises hitting the region.
It draws on our learning from the last two plan periods, quinquennial reviews, and a broad-based strategy development process involving staff, donors, partners, and nodal agencies in the Regional Member Countries (RMCs).
It describes our institutional theory of change and the impact areas and pathways that will guide our work to effect that change. It highlights the partnerships that will enable this change – with our eight RMCs; government, civil society, and private sector partners; and our donors and supporters across the world.
The strategy envisages a new and effective monitoring, evaluation and learning system in place to enable continuous learning, strategizing, and course correction, with an emphasis on learning from both success and failure. Lastly, it charts out the resource mobilisation goals that will enable climate action at scale in the RMCs.
The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) extends over 3,500 km, from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east and crossing Pakistan, India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. It is home to the world’s highest peaks, unique cultures, diverse flora and fauna, and a vast reserve of natural resources. As the source of ten major Asian river systems, the HKH provides essential resources, especially water and biodiversity, to nearly 2 billion people, a fourth of humanity. Its waters irrigate the food baskets of Asia.
The HKH is a critical global asset. Being on top of the world, changes happen here before they happen anywhere else.
Global warming at 2°C, and beyond, will result in the loss of half the volume of the region’s glaciers and destabilize Asia’s river systems, with enormous downstream consequences for billions of people.
Over the last four decades, ICIMOD has cemented its role in the region. It has built on its visionary founding mandate to facilitate exchange and learning on regional and transboundary mountain issues. The confidence, recognition, and credibility that we have cultivated amongst our eight RMCs, as well as international partners over almost forty years, is a testament to the efforts of our founders, governors, regional partners, staff, and funders.
Now established as a leading regional and intergovernmental knowledge and learning centre, we serve our eight RMCs – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar, and Pakistan – working regionally for the benefit of the countries and communities of the HKH. We maintain our nonpolitical and neutral status and respect the concerns of our RMCs. As an impartial convenor and coordinator across the region we value our role on significant technical matters as they arise from research and evidence and as reinforced by the HKH Call to Action.
These values are an expression of our culture and are central to the guiding beliefs and principles of our work and behaviour. Our core values will lie at the heart of ICIMOD operations and delivery. They will underpin everything we do and frame how we work with our partners. They reflect our founding intentions and the balances we seek to hold, while equipping ourselves for the future. These core values are:
We practice honesty, respect, and consistency. We ‘do no harm’ or, where unavoidable, minimize harm to climate, environment, and people. We are impartial in our research, findings, partnerships, staffing, and interactions. We have zero tolerance for impropriety.
We demonstrate the value of diversity throughout our operations. We bring various perspectives in our evidence-building, decision-making, and production. We ensure representation and seek opportunities for diverse voices to be heard.
We are politically impartial and respect the sovereignty of our member countries. Organizationally, we play the roles of convenor, facilitator, organizer, or host. As individuals, we seek to dismantle our own biases to embrace neutral approaches.
We promote open sharing and exchange of information. We support open partnerships where risk taking is viewed as mutual. We seek open management where all staff are open to new ideas. We foster a culture of open learning, from failure and success.
We ensure our priorities are driven by RMC needs while also using evidence to raise awareness of key trends, risks, and opportunities. We seek to respect our partnerships through responsiveness. We aim for our work to be useful.
We collectively strive for the maximum uptake of our knowledge and judge our work on visible and measurable impact rather than effort. We embrace innovation, encourage creativity, and seek out the most effective partnerships for science, scaling, and outreach.
This region – the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) – is hit hard by the perfect storm of the triple planetary crises – climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss – compounded by the setbacks of the pandemic, conflict, and rising poverty and inequality. As we underscored in our Strategy 2030: Moving Mountains, the time for business as usual is over. We need to step up our engagement and support transformative action at scale and with urgency
To build and share knowledge that drives regional policy and action and attracts investment that enables the diverse countries and communities of the HKH to transition to greener, more inclusive, and climate resilient development.
We will need to work differently to meet our ambitions to 2030. There are many dimensions to this but, first and foremost, this will include ensuring we improve the scale and quality of our contributions to impact while also ensuring that all our work is regionally relevant and needs-driven.
We will take the Strategy 2030 aims and objectives forward into the development of our next two Medium Term Action Plans (MTAP). The MTAP V period will cover 2023-2026 and MTAP VI 2027-2030. These MTAPs will spell out how we will deliver our results, our expected financing plans and change processes, and will be accompanied by specific institutional strategies that will support the transition process.
Over this Strategy 2030 period we will track our performance against an agreed set of indicators, and review our changing operating context, in case of any necessary course corrections. Our integrated approach to performance measurement will ensure that we become an adaptive and learning organization. We expect there will be a need to revisit and refresh the Strategy 2030 at the transition between MTAPs V and VI.
We will continue to be guided by our Board of Governors, Programme Advisory Committee, ICIMOD Support Group, and Finance Committee in taking this strategy forward, and we acknowledge their valuable advice and inputs in the process of developing this strategy.
