Hidden Trillions of the Himalayan Economy

The Himalayan arc is home to 240 million people spread across six nations — a population larger than Russia's, running on roughly a tenth of its GDP. That gap is not a symptom of scarcity. It is the clearest mispricing in Asian economic geography.

The region sits on 500 GW of hydropower potential, of which only 22% is tapped. Its tourism economy generates $15 billion a year today, with a credible path to $60 billion by 2030 if development is sequenced sustainably. Formal border trade through five Himalayan passes is currently a fraction of its $50 billion annual ceiling.

Layer in an estimated 15–20% of Asia's rare-earth potential along the Arunachal-to-Tibet belt, and $8–10 billion a year in reforestation and renewables-linked carbon credits, and the shape of an underpriced asset class becomes hard to ignore.

None of this requires a new discovery. It requires capital willing to underwrite altitude, and infrastructure patient enough to survive a monsoon.