The Renlongba Glacier in Qamdo City, Xizang Autonomous Region, southwest China, April 5, 2025. /VCG

In response to the accelerating glacier melt, the Chinese government launched the integrated protection and systematic management project for "mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands, deserts and ice" in 2021. The inclusion of "ice" in this initiative reflects a deeper recognition of the shared fate between humanity and nature. China has implemented various measures, with the most crucial being energy conservation and emission reduction to curb temperature rise. Other measures include:

a) Establishing a glacier monitoring network, including the State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science and the Tianshan Glaciological Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, employs satellite remote sensing, drone mapping and ground-based observations to enable real-time monitoring.

b) Developing glacier simulation and prediction models to improve the ability to forecast future glacier evolution and its impacts.

c) Establishing glacier nature reserves, such as the Qomolangma National Nature Reserve and the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, to minimize direct human impact.

d) Optimizing water resource management by building reservoirs and improving inter-basin water transfer projects to address the temporal and spatial variations in glacier meltwater, thereby mitigating future water shortages.

Some artificial intervention measures are currently in the experimental stage, such as surface coverings and artificial snow augmentation which provide effective physical protection by enhancing glacier reflectivity and mass in high-altitude regions. Experimental data show that these methods can slow the melting rate by 35 to 70 percent, but due to high costs, they are challenging to implement on a large scale.