Developing congruent transboundary strategies to address climate risk related challenges in High Mountain Asia relies on data that can be compared across borders and is trusted by multiple stakeholders. In a politically fractured domain and with many of the dialogues supported or even initiated by international actors (relying on science often developed outside the region), rather than homegrown solutions, three challenges have ensued in recent years in the high mountain domain.

First, topics to be addressed with urgency are driven by the attention they receive in media or research, not necessarily by impact. For example, glacial lake outburst floods, which cause fewer fatalities each year than any other mountain hazard in the region receive the largest share of attention. Secondly, trust builds on ownership – while regional countries in HMA do appreciate state of the art international knowledge, homegrown science is important to ensure sustainable implementation. Support for regional academic excellence beyond few clusters of excellence, however, remains weak. Finally, inclusion of local knowledge from the actual mountain regions remains limited, and is rather drawn from the plains, again from experts not necessarily familiar with ground realities. Tensions between experts within a singly country mimic similar upstream-downstream challenges elsewhere.

Based on many years of experience from working across the science-policy domain in the region and following experience from a regional platform on risk related data management under the Himalayan University Consortium, we outline how some of those shortcomings could potentially be tackled from the bottom up in future, informing and further strengthening existing initiatives.