The Himalayan region is facing a new crisis under climate change, rapid economic transformation, and escalating geopolitical tensions. A large body of Himalayan sciences has endeavored to understand this challenge but has failed to engage meaningfully with the local people and policymakers. I argue for a new engaged Himalayan sustainability science that not only understands and interprets the emerging challenges but also strengthens societal capability. The Himalayan region is facing a new crisis under climate change, rapid economic transformation, and escalating geopolitical tensions. A large body of Himalayan sciences has endeavored to understand this challenge but has failed to engage meaningfully with the local people and policymakers. I argue for a new engaged Himalayan sustainability science that not only understands and interprets the emerging challenges but also strengthens societal capability. In the summer of 2020, a severe landslide struck a mountain community in the Sindhupalchowk district of Nepal. This was not unforeseen. The area had been previously identified by bio-physical experts as susceptible to landslide risk, and a scientific recommendation was made to relocate the settlements out of the risk zone. However, there was no analysis of risks pertaining to the adoption of the recommendation in the policy world. The scientific investigation lacked the social and policy dimensions of interdisciplinary risk assessment. Community perceptions of risk and the complex pathways to decision making were not considered. This narrowly construed science-based advice therefore did not trigger policy response, and no practical action was taken. And the knowledge of local communities, which enabled them to thrive in the fragile environment in the past, was inadequate to contain such a profound risk. The tragic result was that an entire village was swept away during the normal annual rainfall. Homes were destroyed. More than 40 innocent people, including children, died. This was not the first time that science failed Himalayan peoples. In the late 1960s, the Himalayan region experienced a major crisis when rampant deforestation took place in the steep mountain slopes, leading to soil erosion, landslides, and downstream flooding, all of which were collectively known as the Himalayan Degradation. This sparked numerous scientific studies of the problem and its potential solutions. Fifty years later, the region is facing another impending crisis—this time attributed to climate change and a multitude of factors such as economic transformations, demographic shifts, resource conflicts, and a variety of natural and human-induced disasters. In a positive sense, the new crisis is unfolding at a time when our knowledge about the Himalayas has grown exponentially from what we knew 50 years ago. However, this scientific work has had little impact on the ground and in the domain of policy. This is mainly because the way in which scientific knowledge is generated, disseminated, and applied is flawed. It is now high time to reimagine a more engaged and problem-focused version of the Himalayan science. The Himalayas are home to the third-largest ice mass after the polar regions, and this ice mass feeds meltwater to ten large river systems that support the lives and livelihoods of nearly 300 million people on the upstream slopes, the lives of 1.9 billion people living in the downstream areas in Asia, and food production and supply for nearly 3 billion people globally (see Figure 1).1Sharma E. Molden D. Rahman A. Khatiwada Y.R. Zhang L. Singh S.P. Yao T. Wester P. Introduction to the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment.in: Wester P. Mishra A. Mukherji A. Shrestha A. The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Springer, 2019: 1-16https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92288-1_1Crossref Google Scholar The glaciers that feed these rivers are melting at an unprecedented rate,2Maurer J.M. Schaefer J.M. Rupper S. Corley A. Acceleration of ice loss across the Himalayas over the past 40 years.Sci. Adv. 2019; 5: v7266Crossref Scopus (181) Google Scholar affecting river flows and leading to floods in some of the most densely populated regions of the world. Superimposed onto this global hotspot of climate change, poverty, and weak governance are two of the world’s rapidly growing and largest economies—India and China—and the extra economic pressures they bring. If the mounting knowledge crisis is ignored, the consequences for this fragile and vulnerable region of immense economic, environmental, and cultural value will be dire. As such, the Himalayan region is facing enormous but fundamentally different challenges particular to the Himalayas. The scale of the problems that the region is facing is too large and complex to be resolved by independent and objective scientific advice alone. The region now needs a different system of research that engages with the messy contexts and considers local politicians and communities as partners in understanding and managing the Himalayan challenges. “Objective” and detached Himalayan research must connect back to the lived-in experience of the Himalayan communities and policy actors who are struggling to manage agriculture, rivers, slopes, biodiversity, society, and culture as interconnected and politicized socio-ecological systems. Science in the Himalayas has a long history. From early 19th century colonial exploration through the reporting of the first Himalayan crisis in the 1960s to recent studies of climate change impacts at the turn of the new millennium, notable scientific studies of the Himalayas have been produced. These include seminal works published in high-impact research outlets and global media reports of science agencies working in the region. Most of these works, primarily authored by Western researchers, have, however, focused on the promotion of biophysical explanations of land degradation in the Himalayas. They emphasize predictions, risk assessments, and projections—too few attempt to link the work of science to practice-based knowledge and policy deliberations.3Satyal P. Shrestha K. Ojha H. Vira B. Adhikari J. A new Himalayan crisis? Exploring transformative resilience pathways.Environ. Dev. 2017; 23: 47-56Crossref Scopus (28) Google Scholar The impact of science failure in the region is huge. In 2013, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, a massive flood disaster that claimed the lives of over 1,000 people is another example of this disconnect. India has an excellent system to monitor and analyze meteorological data and assess flood risks, but such biophysical knowledge seldom gets translated into policy and practice. Flood damage to life and property at that scale was inevitable given the hundreds of years of urban expansion across the risk zone; clearly, urban policy and planning were detached from the biophysical science of risks. Although the disaster was considered a natural flood, its architects were people, and the knowledge systems they used were flawed. Even in situations where scientific investigations have sought to look beyond physical risk assessment and identify practical solutions, the lack of an interdisciplinary approach often means that solutions remain incomplete or, worse, result in maladaptation, compounding the situation. Himalayan mountain agriculture, for example, is under immense stress as a result of erratic rainfall, frequent droughts, and low returns, forcing young males to leave the villages for jobs in towns or overseas. Women are taking an even larger role in agriculture, yet Himalayan agricultural sciences focus on developing high-yielding crop varieties, which have in fact increased women’s workload because they reduce fodder and require women to spend more time on gathering forages. Much of gender research continues to ignore complex relationships among gender, the environment, and development.4Nightingale A. The nature of gender: work, gender, and environment.Environ. Plann. D Soc. Space. 2006; 24: 165-185Crossref Scopus (278) Google Scholar The agricultural sciences are too slow to adopt a holistic view to tackle the core socio-ecological challenges; rather, their dominant focus is on the productivity of individual crops. These Himalayan studies have largely been driven by technical approaches nurtured in the techno-scientific fields of knowledge production and circulation. Himalayan science has thus focused for too long on observation rather than engagement, on gathering information via specific disciplinary lenses rather than creating policy-relevant knowledge, and on producing and disseminating information rather than co-producing through multiple knowledge strategies adopted by diverse actor groups. The way science is pursued does not appear to be engaged in the task of problem solving, social learning with communities, and policy deliberation. There remains a lack of what some call “mode 2” science.5Gibbons M. Mode 2 society and the emergence of context-sensitive science.Sci. Public Policy. 2002; 27: 159-163Crossref Scopus (174) Google Scholar There is now a need to reimagine a science that enhances societal capability to cope with the crises. We don’t have the luxury of failing again. A new approach to science must confront the unique context of the Himalayas: diverse geographic situations from plains in the south to the high mountains in the north, hundreds of socio-economically marginalized communities and their settlements in risky localities, different cultural systems and diverse visions of sustainability and prosperity, fragile topographies and the risk of landslide and floods, a higher-than-global average rate of climate change, limited accessibility and remoteness, rapid rural-to-urban migration, agricultural decline, and tensions between upstream and downstream communities. The region has a rich repertoire of Indigenous and other traditional knowledges that have sustained human communities for generations. Any work of scientific knowledge must consider these important contextual elements. The science that the Himalayan region needs must embrace the inevitable nature of co-production6Jasanoff S. States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and the Social Order. Routledge, 2004Crossref Scopus (9) Google Scholar between science and society rather than keep science independent of society. Of course, no single science program can tackle all of these wicked challenges; yet, a multi-scalar, adaptive, and interactive program that treats these forces seriously can help build the societal capabilities necessary for building more sustainable Himalayan development pathways. I propose an engaged Himalayan sustainability science (EHSS) that forges a productive dialogue between two strands of research: (1) sustainability science and (2) transdisciplinary and critical action research. The emerging body of sustainability science in the global domain has sought to tackle the continuing disconnect between science and sustainable development practice.7Kates R.W. What kind of a science is sustainability science?.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2011; 108: 19449-19450Crossref PubMed Scopus (300) Google Scholar Sustainability science is “a field defined by the problems it addresses rather than by the disciplines it employs.”8Clark W.C. Sustainability science: a room of its own.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2007; 104: 1737-1738Crossref PubMed Scopus (434) Google Scholar Two crucial questions that guide the work of sustainability science are (1) how society can most effectively guide or manage nature-society systems toward a sustainability transition and (2) how to identify appropriate sustainability pathways of change. Although these questions prompt a shift toward engaged science, a question that is missing is how researchers can engage more proactively in dialogue with local communities and policymakers and build their capacity. This question is addressed by the second strand of research I propose. Interestingly, transdisciplinary and critically engaged action research are not an alien concept in the Himalayan region, and some successful innovations are already in practice. A key example of this approach is known as critical action research (CAR), which co-evolved with community forestry development in Nepal.9Ojha H. Counteracting hegemonic powers in the policy process: critical action research on Nepal’s forest governance.Crit. Policy Stud. 2013; 7: 242-262Crossref Scopus (26) Google Scholar Although these are small and isolated in comparison with the scale and enormity of the Himalayan challenge, they offer ample basis for envisioning an EHSS framework. CAR builds on several action-oriented approaches to critical inquiry that have emerged over the past two decades in non-Western contexts—such as participatory action research10Fals-Borda O. Participatory action research.Development. 1997; 40: 92Google Scholar and the conscientization of the disadvantaged through critical pedagogies of learning and empowerment.11Freire P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing, 1970Google Scholar The CAR approach in Nepal’s community forestry has shown how critical inquiry and interdisciplinary science can help to democratize the policy process and catalyze local solutions. The CAR approach is an iterative meaning-making process rather than a stepwise, linear progression of analytic logic performed by “observer” scientists. CAR adopts a “dialectical epistemology” in which critical knowledge is generated not through the empirical-analytic exercise of the researcher but through a “dialectical clash”12Fischer F. Beyond empiricism: policy inquiry in post positivist perspective.Policy Stud. 1998; 26: 129-146Crossref Scopus (196) Google Scholar with the actors concerned with a policy. It is a reflective process through which researchers continually become aware of their own limitations and remain committed to learning with communities and policy actors. In Nepal’s community forestry, CAR has also enhanced the interplay between research and social-movement practices, an interplay I regard as crucial in improving the democratic quality of policy processes. CAR appreciates that action-based evidence is more contextually grounded and has the potential to foster the co-production of knowledge and policy. The dialogue between sustainability science and CAR provides a strong basis for EHSS, which is fundamentally about engaging with the context, culture, and policy in the Himalayan region. It also offers an integrative, synoptic, and systemic view while remaining methodologically transdisciplinary and action oriented. In Nepal’s community forestry, CAR catalyzed dialogue between the community and policymakers to find sustainable and equitable strategies for forest management. The co-production imperative underpinning EHSS and its underlying goal of building societal capacity requires genuinely deliberative processes13Dryzek J.S. Bächtiger A. Chambers S. Cohen J. Druckman J.N. Felicetti A. Fishkin J.S. Farrell D.M. Fung A. Gutmann A. et al.The crisis of democracy and the science of deliberation.Science. 2019; 363: 1144-1146Crossref PubMed Google Scholar across those who pursue knowledge and those who exercise power. As presented schematically in Figure 2, EHSS treats the geographic and cultural context seriously as a co-productive interface with the practice of research and social learning. The fields of knowledge production and application within the rubric of EHSS will essentially be transboundary given the cross-border flow of water and energy in the Himalayan region. EHSS is not proposed to replace sectoral or issue-based research; it is indeed an organizing and reflective framework for harnessing the co-productive potential of science and technology development in the Himalayas. EHSS is an invitation to hold serious discussions on how a coherent and adaptive framing of Himalayan science can evolve to strengthen and transform the societal capability to manage risks and trigger more sustainable pathways into the future. As such, EHSS can help advance critical, creative, action-oriented, policy-relevant, and applied research practices to contribute to the sustainability of the Himalayas. EHSS needs to be multi-scalar and work across four scales: (1) the connection of upstream Himalayas with downstream regions, such as the lower Mekong; (2) Himalayan-wide analysis of changes in the upper Himalayas, valleys, and gorges; (3) national and provincial-level research and engagement in the Himalayan countries; and (4) local community-scale social-ecological systems. Specific EHSS projects can operate at one or more of these scales. EHSS must also be able to forge conversations when stakes are extremely high, especially when considering large economies such as China and India, which carry different and sometimes conflicting political and economic ambitions on Himalayan resources, such as water. At least three actionable opportunities exist for moving forward with EHSS. First and foremost, the Himalayan scientific community has an opportunity to engage in critical self-reflection on their practice in terms of engagement, policy impact, community empowerment, and wider sustainability outcomes. The question is, what useful impact has resulted from the past six decades of research investment? This reflective exercise can lead to an appreciation of the need for embracing an EHSS type of approach. International research funders can also identify new approaches to support research that can lead to better impact. Regional knowledge organizations, such as the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, can better reposition themselves into the cascading space of the research-into-action paradigm, beyond the science-policy interface, by treating co-production as an overarching principle of research and policy engagement. National research systems can also identify higher-impact pathways for research by embracing the EHSS framework. Second, bringing science closer to the domain of decision systems and community practices will open up new possibilities for interactive learning and change. Isolated cases of EHSS practices can be explored and used as a basis for learning. Recognition of local experts and documentation of their experiential knowledge on both the science and policy sides of the process can generate actionable knowledge for sustainability transition. Downscaling climate science to the local government level and then creating platforms for research-informed deliberation can help advance Himalayan sustainability science into practice and local-level planning domains. Regional governments can collaborate to sponsor periodic assessments of socio-environmental risks in upstream and downstream locations. Third, research-policy partnerships at the sub-national, national, and regional levels can advance EHSS approaches. National governments can support independent Himalayan sustainability research at universities, which should change their pedagogies of teaching and paradigms of research to co-learn with the community and policy actors. Networks of locally engaged researchers, coming from different cultural backgrounds in the region, can deliberate ways to advance EHSS. An emerging network of knowledge organizations, such as research non-governmental organizations, could play a useful brokering role among science, policy, and practice. In simple terms, what is needed is a stronger link between knowledge and action. Connecting research with the actual experience of people can unravel the meaning of research and hence inform deliberation around decision processes. This goes beyond the notion of participation and embraces the fundamental process of co-production. This research is supported through the project “Governing Climate Resilient Futures: Gender, Justice and Conflict Resolution in Resource Management” (JUSTCLIME), funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet Diarienummer: 2018-05866). This paper also benefitted from International Development Research Center-funded research project Climate Adaptive Water Management in South Asia (2016–2019) implemented by the Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS). The author acknowledges the useful feedback and comments received from Andrea Nightingale (University of Oslo) and John Dryzek (University of Canberra). The article also builds on a presentation that the author gave in December 2018 at a Himalayan Policy Lab event organized by SIAS in collaboration with the Institute for Study and Development Worldwide (Australia), the University of Canberra, the University of Oslo (Norway), the Future Himalaya Institute (Nepal), ISET Nepal, and Appalachian State University (US). The author also acknowledges useful comments from Rodney Keenan, Jagannath Adhikari, and Basundhara Bhattarai on an early draft version. The views presented are those of the author and not of the organizations he is associated with.