Groundwater (GW) is a critical yet increasingly threatened resource, particularly in India, the world’s largest user. Climate change, through rising temperatures, increased evapotranspiration, and erratic rainfall, intensifies GW depletion by altering aquifer dynamics, while industrialization and unregulated quarrying exacerbate this degradation. The resulting losses extend beyond economic measures, manifesting as Non-Economic Loss and Damage (NELD), including displacement of livelihoods, cultural identity, traditional water sharing practices, and collective well-being. Hydrogeochemical assessments and socio-ecological vulnerability analysis in the Periyar River Basin (PRB), —a climate-sensitive zone in the Southern Western Ghats—illustrate how consecutive droughts (2016–2017) and f loods (2018–2019) induce profound, intangible losses, disrupting agrarian and fishing livelihoods and weakening cultural attachment to riverine ecosystems. This study highlights Non-Economic Loss and Damage (NELD) in the Periyar River Basin, showing how groundwater contamination, chemical changes, and rising climate-linked diseases like Dengue and Leptospirosis affect community health, and well-being. These impacts go beyond financial costs, emphasizing the need to consider ecological, cultural, and social dimensions in water management and climate adaptation planning. Incorporating NELD into GW governance is essential for climate justice, enabling recognition and quantification of these invisible losses, strengthening basin-level planning, supporting global engagement with climate f inance mechanisms such as the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), and fostering resilience while safeguarding social and ecological integrity in the Western Ghats.

Utah Lake, Utah, USA, has undergone an anthropogenic ecosystem shift from clearwater to a turbid state in less than 150 years. There is now strong citizen support for its restoration, including its native fishes. However, no effort has been made to understand its food web or ecosystem function, essential for scientifically based restoration. Consequently, a representative food web model was urgently needed. We present the first-ever food web-based, ecosystem function model of Utah Lake using EcoPath. Biomasses, diets, and production/biomass ratios of eighty-one taxonomic groups were modeled. Results showed an impaired Utah Lake ecosystem dominated by only a handful of taxa, including invasive carp, other invasive fishes, and pollution-tolerant chironomids. Lake energy sources were co-dominated by water column primary production and detritus, mostly as detrital snow with negligible benthic photosynthetic production. Utah Lake has low robustness (e.g., resistance), is below optimal trophic functioning, and is trapped in an ‘immature’ early succession stage primarily because of chronic wave action that disturbs unconsolidated sediments, thus preventing system maturation, maintaining the lake in a ‘bloom’ susceptible eutrophic state that underutilizes available nutrients. Carp reduction had positive mixed-level trophic impacts on several groups, indicating the need for an improved reduction program. Increased monitoring and research are essential, including ecosystem network analyses needed to predict future changes to Utah Lake’s ecosystem, including directing restorative actions.