HEF Agenda
The Himalaya's economic future will be set by decisions made in the next decade: how its rivers are priced, who owns its land, what its mountains can carry, and who pays for its distance.
The HEF Agenda is where we argue those decisions through. Each piece takes a question the region is facing, tests it against the evidence, and compares it with how other mountain economies have answered it.
Our trackers show what is happening. The Agenda asks what should happen next.
16 pieces
Six Things the Himalaya Can Learn from Alaska
Alaska turned oil royalties into a sovereign wealth fund, land claims into equity and fisheries into quotas. Six lessons for the Himalaya, and what each would reprice.
Joshua Singh Kanwar
Same Valley, Twice: Himalayan hydropower is carrying glacier risk it has not priced
Five Nepal hydropower plants were damaged by glacier floods in July 2025 and again in August 2026. Less than 5% of the loss is insured. HEF analysis.
Himachal's Apple Economy Isn't Shrinking. It's Changing Address.
Apple output falls 40% to 4.36 lakh MT in 2026 while prices hit Rs 145/kg. The revenue cushion is hiding a permanent relocation of a Rs 5,000 crore crop to higher ground.
Twenty-One Glaciers: The Number Nobody Reported
The Himalaya underpin over 20% of India's GDP. Only 0.1% of the region's 40,000 glaciers are regularly monitored. That gap, not the melt rate, is the finding that matters.
Medog: A Briefing on What It Actually Changes for India
China's Yarlung Tsangpo mega-dam cannot switch off the Brahmaputra. India supplies most of its flow. The exposures that matter are sediment, lean-season timing and missing data.
The Cryosphere as a Financial Layer
Why Himalayan snow and ice are measured as environment and priced as nothing — and what a basin-level exposure index would change
Altitude Migration and the Repricing of Mountain Land
Himachal Pradesh's apple belt is moving uphill. The agronomy is documented. The land economics are not.
The snow line nobody prices
Asia's largest water asset is measured every year and valued never. In 2023, a glacial lake in Sikkim showed what that omission costs.
The line moving up the mountain
Himachal's apple crop will fall around 40% this year. The more consequential number is the elevation at which apples now grow — and nobody is recording it.
Hidden Trillions of the Himalayan Economy
Unlocking the trillion-dollar corridor
India's AI Ambition Needs 40–50 TWh of New Power
Himalayas have the answer
Earth's Third Pole is Melting
The glaciers that feed 1.4 billion people are retreating — and the region's economic model still assumes they won't
GEC-II: Green Energy Corridor
The world's first high-capacity power corridor built above 4,700m in Ladakh
Middle East Escalation
Economic implications for energy, trade, and the Himalayan Belt (IHR)
The $80bn Himalayan Connectivity Deficit
Why Asia's highest-return infrastructure frontier remains unfunded
Himalayan Water: Will it Fuel Asia's Next Conflict?
Or a $4 trillion boom?