Indonesia, West Papua – The ice around Carstensz Peak in West Papua's central highlands has shrunk to roughly 16 hectares and could disappear entirely by late 2026 or early 2027, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. Once part of a wider system of "eternal snow" crowning peaks such as Mandala and Trikora, the Carstensz glaciers are now the only ones left, having lost more than 99 per cent of their extent since around 1850. The retreat has even reshaped the mountains themselves: Ngga Pulu, higher than Carstensz in 1936 thanks to its ice cap, has since sunk below its neighbour, making Carstensz the highest point in Oceania.

Czech glacial ecologist Marie Sabacka of Charles University, who studied the East Carstensz Glacier in March alongside Roberto Ambrosini of the University of Milan, says the ice is far from lifeless. Preliminary analysis of ice cores and dark sediment samples points to a distinctive community of microorganisms and microscopic animals, some belonging to lineages rarely seen in glaciers elsewhere. Because glacial communities are highly localised, no other site can substitute for East Carstensz once it melts, meaning an unexplored ecosystem and a climate archive of the tropical Pacific will vanish together. Sabacka attributes the loss primarily to human-driven atmospheric warming, which raises the freezing level and turns snowfall into rain, with El Nino events accelerating the process.

While the glaciers are too small to affect sea levels or local water supplies in rain-soaked Papua, Sabacka argues their disappearance carries a stark moral weight. Indigenous communities contribute almost nothing to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet they are watching irreversible changes unfold on their ancestral land. The same climate shifts are already hitting highland gardens through drought, extreme rainfall and crop-killing frost, effects she says may weigh far more heavily on daily life than the loss of meltwater. The vanishing ice is less a resource than a warning sign, and a symbol of how those least responsible for warming are among the first to bear its consequences.

Source: https://humanrightsmonitor.org/news/scientists-warn-west-papuas-last-glacier-nears-extinction