Drying Himalayan springs as a non-traditional security threat to India: a securitization approach

India’s strategic community has long been preoccupied with conventional military threats, but the security implications of environmental change remain underexplored. This paper examines the depletion of natural springs across the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) through the lens of securitization theory, arguing that spring degradation constitutes a significant yet under-securitized non-traditional security threat. Nearly half of the region’s springs have dried up or become seasonal over recent decades, affecting some 50 million people across 12 Himalayan states. Despite this scale, springs are largely absent from India’s water security agenda and from strategic discourse altogether. Using the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework, this paper demonstrates that Himalayan springs have not been articulated as existential threats to valued referent objects, border stability, civilian settlement, and the operational sustenance of security forces, even though the material case for doing so is compelling. The paper argues that this under-securitization is not incidental but structural: it reflects a governance architecture that treats springs as localized development problems, routes responsibility through fragmented departments, and defaults to technocratic supply-augmentation rather than ecological source management. Central to this analysis is a distinction between two modes of securitization with materially different governance implications. Traditional securitization, exemplified by the Jal Jeevan Mission, follows a top-down, supply-side logic that delivers water infrastructure without addressing the depletion of the springs that underpin it. Non-traditional securitization, advocated by the NITI Aayog spring revival report, is community-centred, ecologically grounded, and focused on the recharge conditions that sustain springs over the long term. The gap between these two governance orientations explains why spring-related vulnerabilities continue to accumulate in India’s Himalayan borderlands. The paper concludes with policy recommendations emphasizing springshed management, institutional convergence, and the integration of spring sustainability into security planning.