What if we judge climate research less by how precisely it predicts the future and more by how well it helps us prepare for it? That is where my thinking ended up after a discussion I started on the Geological Society of America (GSA) forum.
As an early-career GSA member and a researcher in geosciences, I had asked a blunt question: “Are we putting too much money into ever more complex climate scenarios, and too little into the research communities need?” I was not doubting climate science. I wanted to know how limited public research money should be divided, and when a refined projection stops being more useful than focused work that helps people decide today.
The replies changed my framing. Michael J. O’Hara, writing from public policy, economics, and law, argued that we already know the problem is serious; what we often lack is knowing where local intervention would do the most good. He pointed me to Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future (Robinson, 2020), which imagines an institution that brings the interests of future generations into present political and economic decisions. Another respondent warned against overconfidence in predicting exactly when and where impacts will land.
Both made me think of Kashmir, where climate change is not a line on a global temperature graph. It runs through glaciers, rivers, wetlands, farms, growing towns and disaster risk, and people live inside every one of those systems. The useful question is not whether Kashmir will warm. It is what information we need now to make it more resilient to a future we cannot fully predict.
A projection is not a policy. A forecast of warming decades from now does not tell a district administration where to build a flood-control structure, or a town planner which land to keep clear of development.
Here prediction and preparedness part ways. For Kashmir, the practical questions are narrower. Which catchments are growing more flood-prone? Which communities sit below glacial lakes that could burst? How much water can the Jhelum supply in low flow? And the one that matters most: where should limited money go first? No single discipline can answer these. Glaciologists, hydrologists, ecologists, economists, planners and local communities have to work on them together.
Take the Kolahoi Glacier. Rashid et al. (2017) found that its snout moved back 2.85 km between 1857 and 2014, about 18.2 m a year, and that between 1962 and 2013 it lost 2.81 km² of area and 0.30 km³ of ice. A later study put cumulative deglaciation at 23.6 percent for 1962 to 2018 and found the snowline had climbed by roughly 120 m (Rashid et al., 2020).
That second study then set the ice loss beside streamflow records from five gauging sites. Discharge was declining at all five, though the trend was statistically significant at only three. They then tracked land use in the Lidder watershed from 1980 to 2018: agriculture shrank by 39 percent, while orchards grew by 176 percent and built-up area by 476 percent. Asked why, 64 percent of 142 residents named economics and 30 percent named falling streamflow.
A retreat rate says little about water, farming or money until they are measured as one system.
Romshoo et al. (2018) found that the 2014 flood, with peak discharge above 115,000 cfs, followed seven days of extreme rainfall and was worsened by the valley’s geomorphic setup. Floodplain urbanisation, wetland loss and siltation aggravated it further. Rain triggered the disaster; accumulated choices widened it. Yousuf and Romshoo (2022) modelled peak discharge in the upper Jhelum basin at 98,965 cfs under 1980 land cover and 118,366 cfs under 2020 land cover, about 20 percent higher (118,366 ÷ 98,965 = 1.196). That is a model result, not a measurement.
Climate change often amplifies a vulnerability that already exists. A city with working wetlands and protected floodplains meets an extreme storm differently from one where wetlands have been filled and channels blocked. Adaptation in Kashmir therefore cannot be separated from land-use planning. If a floodplain floods repeatedly, keeping construction off it may cost less than rebuilding again and again.
Wetlands earn attention for biodiversity and migratory birds, and they deserve it. They can also regulate water, hold floodwater and recharge groundwater, which makes them natural infrastructure. It is easy to undervalue because it never appears in a budget the way a dam does.
Here Robinson’s novel earns its place. Its ministry speaks for people who cannot yet vote because they are not yet born. A wetland destroyed today costs no politician anything this year; the bill arrives later as flooding, water insecurity or ecological loss. Forests, glaciers and groundwater work the same way. Protecting them is an investment across generations.
Long-term modelling remains necessary. The trouble starts when we assume a more complicated projection yields a more useful policy. More information is not the same as more actionable information.
For Kashmir, I would build a long-term observation system that links the scales: sustained glacier and snow measurements, reliable river-discharge records, better mountain weather data, a glacial-lake inventory with outburst-flood assessment, wetland and groundwater monitoring, and high-resolution land-use mapping, all tied to data on population, infrastructure and livelihoods. Such a system would not predict every detail. It would help answer a better question: given several plausible futures, which decisions still make sense in all of them?
We cannot know the exact discharge or glacier state at one location decades ahead, but uncertainty does not excuse inaction. We cannot time the next major flood, but we can improve early warning. Good policy does not need perfect knowledge. It needs enough knowledge to decide better than we would without it.
Kashmir does not need another government department. It needs the principle behind Robinson’s fictional ministry: a standing mechanism that weighs long-term environmental consequences when today’s decisions are made. That could be a permanent, interdisciplinary environmental knowledge framework with a plain mandate: what is changing, why, who is vulnerable, where intervention would cut risk most, and what to do now.
It would also make research accountable. Instead of counting papers, we could ask whether the work changed a planning decision, protected a wetland or sharpened a flood warning. That is no argument against fundamental science. It is an argument for tying it to public use.
I would now put the original GSA question differently: not whether we invest in climate research, but whether we invest enough in the right kind. Kashmir does not need scientists to pretend they can predict its future exactly. It needs them, with officials and communities, to understand risks already emerging and build systems that can respond to uncertainty. The Ministry for the Future is fiction. The glaciers, rivers and wetlands of Kashmir are not. The rule is simple: observe carefully, research locally, acknowledge uncertainty, protect natural systems, and invest where knowledge can become action.

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