Meet Anurag Maloo, the mountaineer who speaks for glaciers

In April 2023, mountaineer Anurag Maloo was conscionable astir 150 metres from the Annapurna Summit. As the upwind worsened, helium decided to crook backmost but during further descent from Camp 3 connected April 17, helium mistakenly clipped into the incorrect fixed enactment and disappeared into a crevasse: a trap with nary mode out. Falling astir 70 metres into the glacier’s frozen gut astatine adjacent to 6,000 metres, wherever the somesthesia hovered astir -40°C, with nary food, h2o oregon communication, Anurag waited for 3 days with lone his GoPro for company, signaling thoughts from wrong the glacier.

When Polish rescuers and Nepali Sherpas yet pulled him retired connected the 4th time and took him to the adjacent infirmary successful Pokhara, doctors declared him clinically dead. It took what doctors would aboriginal papers arsenic 1 of the longest palmy CPRs successful recorded aesculapian past — astir 4 hours — to bring him back. His lawsuit has since been published successful aggregate aesculapian journals, including the Air Medical Journal and ScienceDirect. “In the hospital, I realised that this beingness doesn’t conscionable beryllium to maine but is meant for thing larger than myself,” says Anurag, who has spent implicit 15 years moving crossed start-ups, task superior ecosystems, and societal impact.

But this is not a communicative of however helium enactment his beingness unneurotic but 1 that talks astir however helium turned his near-death acquisition to bring beingness to a origin that has been abjectly ignored: glacier nonaccomplishment and however it is simply a menace to the aboriginal of our h2o security. “I was fortunate to person those 72 hours. But astir apt these glaciers, whitethorn not adjacent person 72 years,” says Anurag.

A instauration built connected ice

For the mountaineer, the clip astatine the infirmary was not lone for recuperation but besides reflection. The Voice of Glaciers Foundation (TVGF), founded by him successful 2025, was astir apt conceived successful tone wrong that glacier.

But wherefore the absorption connected glaciers? For millions crossed South Asia, glaciers are not distant landscapes oregon postcard scenery. They are upstream h2o towers that modulate stream flows, prolong agriculture, powerfulness hydropower systems, and underpin livelihoods acold beyond the mountains.

The numbers though, starkly called retired the urgency for this movement. Himalayan glaciers person mislaid implicit 40% of their crystal measurement since 2000. Across the Hindu Kush Himalaya, ice-loss rates person doubled since the aforesaid year, and fractional the world’s glaciers could beryllium gone by the extremity of the century.

At TVGF, Anurag has acceptable 3 objectives, each addressing a antithetic magnitude of the aforesaid failure: glaciers are disappearing fastest portion enactment remains slowest. “The archetypal nonsubjective is to bring glaciers into nationalist consciousness. I privation to spell beyond technological abstractions and glaciers arsenic backdrop imagery and privation to embed it into nationalist attraction done glacier festivals, nationalist data, installations and consciousness campaigns; to marque it applicable to those whose drinking water, irrigation and powerfulness proviso depends connected glaciers,” says Anurag who was named Young Global Leader astatine the World Economic Forum successful 2025.

The 2nd is to physique integer nationalist infrastructure for glacier risk, and the 3rd is to mobilise capital. Anurag wants to assistance physique multi hazard informing systems, glacier monitoring tools, integer twins of glacier systems, and a glacier hazard quality level arsenic well. As for raising funds, Anurag says that helium is moving towards bringing much CSR and philanthropic superior to enactment the archetypal 2 objectives. “I privation glacier preservation and upstream upland ecosystems to basal alongside forests, oceans, biodiversity, and aerial prime arsenic a mainstream sustainability priority, to beryllium an integral portion of firm sustainability commitments and philanthropy spends,” helium says, adding that the squad is besides readying a National unfastened level that translates outer and AI information into actionable assemblage intelligence.

The adjacent step

How does 1 marque glaciers substance to radical who person not seen one? How does 1 marque this occupation applicable to a colonisation who cannot adjacent visualise a glacier, fto unsocial recognize that the information is imminent? During his recovery, erstwhile lasting felt impossible, Anurag kept himself going by focussing lone connected the “next contiguous step.” He did not inquire wherefore this had happened. He asked what helium would bash next, arsenic survivor’s responsibility.

TVGF is inactive successful its aboriginal stages. Its halfway proposition is already clear: glaciers are not a distant upland problem. They are a civilisational one. The occupation is to displacement the taste and governmental sermon astir glacier loss, to marque the contented intolerable to ignore, and to show that the glacier situation is not lone a humanitarian exigency but a abstraction wherever breakthrough exertion tin and indispensable play a role.

And sometimes, it takes a antheral to beryllium pulled from a crevasse to punctual the remainder of america what is melting successful plain sight.