Nepal’s flood disaster is bigger than the climate blame game

The devastating catastrophè in Nepal will remain etched in our memories forever. Yet, life beyond the disaster is upon us.

Nepal’s foreign minister was quoted in Kathmandu Post stating that the country was paying the price of climate change, which it did not contribute to, and that a formal policy shift “from aid to justice and compensation” was underway. He ranked China, the US and India as “main industrial emitters” that “have a historical responsibility to compensate vulnerable nations like Nepal”.

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Scientific evidence points differently

All visuals and scientific analyses point to the fact that slope failure of the northern face of Langtang Lirung in Nepal was a geological hazard first, which is difficult to attribute to climate change. In cascade, as is endemic to most Himalayan disasters, a large piece of the glacier above it collapsed. By itself, a glacial collapse would have been attributed entirely to climate change.

Within days of the disaster, Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology and Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the main cryosphere-focused, multilateral entity, described a three-stage catastrophe: Rock-ice landslide/avalanche, two temporary landslide lakes and eventual glacio-fluvial flash flood. The USGS clarified that the seismic waves (magnitude 5.2) did not originate from an earthquake, but were consistent with a mass movement — of rock and ice.

If Nepal’s compensation claim is to succeed, it would need to prove a causal chain of events. In that chain, the rock-ice landslide/avalanche comes first. The underlying cause, bedrock failure, is clearly geological and occurred first. Hence, it will be difficult for Nepal to prove its case, especially against the US, China and EU — the top three cumulative emitters since pre-industrial times. Further, single-event attribution to emissions is a largely fractious, unresolved debate, given that global warming is a possible conditioning parameter but not legally proof of liability leading to compensation.

Ignoring fundamentals of resilient infrastructure

Beyond nature, four man-made causes led to this monumental disaster taking apart the Trishuli valley and the Rasuwa-Gyirong land port. I focus on the land port since thousands of tonnes of pulverised steel and cement from this port added to the debris flow downstream.

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If this non-resilient construction had not been there, damage downstream would have been significantly lower. First, inadequate hazard assessment of the high-risk Trishuli river valley, given that the southwest face of the same Langtang Lirung had collapsed in the April 2015 Gorkha earthquake, killing hundreds, even before the Rasuwa land port and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) were planned.

Second, the location of the port: Reclaiming a significant portion of the floodplain of this historically flash flood prone violent river, at the riskiest point — the alluvial fan, remnant of an old debris flow. Third, constructing a massive non-resilient structure, layering the foundation with cement and steel, assuming that technology is the answer to geography and man has resolved nature. Fourth, ignoring the double glacial lake outburst flood event of July 2025, when the flash flood wiped out the Friendship Bridge and took out 4% of Nepal’s hydropower projects downstream. Nature left a calling card, but the authorities did not deem fit to respond. The same sense of superiority over nature is evident at the 60 GW Medog hydel project and underlies the risk in most of China’s Himalayan constructions.

Naming is shaming or angering?

For Nepal to name China as the sole perpetrator is difficult, given its long and difficult northern border and its role as a signatory to BRI to build a trade alternative to India. The story of its three post-BRI land ports is fragile. Gyirong processed about 40% of Nepal-China land trade but has a very risky multi-hazard location-route profile. Tatopani accounted for about 45% of trade but is chronically landslide-prone and operationally unreliable. Mustang has lower flash flood risk, but risky access roads.

Naming India was easy since our relationship is of understanding, history, culture, geography, an open border, a fixed exchange rate and of working as one entity. Nepal is aware that India forms two-thirds of its total trade ($16 billion), absorbing 80% of Nepal’s exports, while China is at one-sixth of total trade and absorbs only 0.5% of its exports. Further, in the past year, the relationship has fast evolved from name-calling to shared rivers, data streams and energy grids.

Further, in these times, naming the US is quite risky, given that Nepal’s application for deferral of withdrawal of LDC (least developed country) status is to be finalised by the UN General Assembly in November and US diplomacy is at its most shrill, anti-emissions moment.

Therefore, Nepal could walk back a bit from the possibly counterproductive naming-and-shaming and ‘compensation, not aid’ framework. India would do well to absorb the statement, without a counter-move and offer grants, aid, loans, financing, technology and expertise. After all, ICIMOD has argued for a decade that no country can manage the risk alone and we are prisoners to this geography.

The writer is former NDMA adviser