Maheshwar Dhakal, Nepal’s climate change chief in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment explicitly blamed climate change for the flooding, while the country’s foreign minister, Shisir Khanal urged world leaders to undertake a "global effort" to tackle climate change.
Read more: In Nepal's Tragedy, a Warning for a Warming World
The country has seen a number of deadly climate events and natural disasters in recent years. Landslides and flooding devastated the region in 2012 and 2017, meanwhile in 2015, a 7.8 earthquake killed close to 9,000 people and triggered more than 20,000 landslides across 14 districts of Central and Western Nepal.
Nepal has a complex topography—ranging from low-lying planes to some of the world’s highest peaks. Last week’s flooding was triggered by a landslide, which caused a glacier to fall, sweeping rocks and melted water into a number of villages downstream.
Over the decades, economic activity has concentrated in riverbank towns and villages below—putting those growing communities at risk.
That means that the area where the floods occurred has become far more populated than it once was. “They have always had these flooding events,” says Ekström. “It's just that now we have a lot more people and infrastructure in these steep valleys. What 100 years ago maybe would have killed dozens of people now kills hundreds of thousands of people.”
How can Nepal prepare for future climate disasters?
“We know about the threat, and we're not completely helpless,” says Vuille. “We can adapt, and while we can't prevent the process from occurring, we can limit the impacts again, mostly by setting up these warning systems, and having the right plans in place.”
Adaption measures will only become more important in a warming world. Nepal produces less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet is among one of the most climate vulnerable nations in the world. The Himalayan region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, leaving Nepal vulnerable to more crises in the face of retreating glaciers and thawing permafrost.
“When we take away the glaciers, we are disturbing the steady state of equilibrium that has existed,” says Ekström. “So for places like Nepal and other places around the world…where the glaciers are disappearing, they are having more landslides because glaciers have been stabilizing the landscape. So we should expect more of these events.”
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