In Nepal’s Tragedy, a Warning for a Warming World

More than 40 bridges have been destroyed or damaged, and 25 miles of vital roadways have been erased from the map, or buried under thick mud, cutting off remote mountain communities and compounding the rescue effort. At the same time, 69 schools have been damaged or destroyed, affecting 19,000 children, according to the charity Save The Children. At least 65,000 people have been directly affected.

Much of the downstream death toll was the result of poor planning and weak enforcement of zoning laws, which allowed settlements to be built along riverbanks. Yet nothing could have saved the hydropower plants, which Nepal needs both to wean itself off fossil fuels and to sustain its energy exports. Melting glaciers, a consequence of global warming, combined with high seismic activity, make the Himalayas a hotspot for catastrophic disaster risk downstream. 

This is also a lesson for other vulnerable river valleys in Nepal. Four major hydropower plants backed by Indian investments sit in the Arun River basin, directly below Makalu, the world’s fifth highest mountain, at 8,463m, in eastern Nepal. The basin also lies downstream from the Tibetan region of China, where dozens of glacial lakes have swollen in size and could burst at any time. The Arun sits just across the border from the Indian state of Sikkim, where a $1 billion, 1,200-megawatt dam, the Teesta III, was wiped out by a glacial lake outburst in October 2023.