Five days after the flood that struck the Rasuwa and Nuwakot regions of Nepal, the number of missing people is growing. The whereabouts of more than ۴,۷۰۰ people are unknown, while local authorities are struggling to cope with the shocking number of recovered bodies.
This disaster hit home for me. My husband’s village was wiped out, his relatives narrowly escaping the flood.
For more than seven years, I have worked in climate advocacy. I have sat in policy meetings, written reports on glacial risk and spoken at panels about the particular vulnerability of Himalayan communities.
I thought I understood what was at stake. I was wrong. The horror and despair I have seen in affected communities are hard to describe.
What is worse is that the threat is far from over. Preliminary scientific evidence indicates that a massive ice-and-rock collapse in the high Himalayas triggered a cascading event in the Lhende Khola, sending a sudden surge of water, rock and sediment into the Bhote Koshi-Trishuli river system.
As a result of this movement, a lake has formed near the Nepal-Tibet border and may yet cause a second flood.
While Nepal could not realistically have prevented the initial collapse, the scale of the disaster highlights glaring gaps in disaster risk reduction and preparedness under a changed climate reality.
The country urgently needs real, funded investment in early-warning systems for glacial and flood hazards in high-risk mountain corridors. Right now, authorities must urgently map and monitor unstable glaciers, landslide-dammed lakes and river corridors, while restoring damaged sensors and establishing ۲۴/۷ real-time communication among mountain monitoring stations and downstream communities.
We need much stronger upstream hazard monitoring and river-corridor planning, including transboundary data-sharing with China, risk-sensitive infrastructure planning and continuous assessment of unstable glaciers, slopes and temporary debris dams.
Clear evacuation triggers, emergency shelters and multiple warning channels, including SMS alerts, sirens and local radio, must be activated immediately to give people enough time to move to safety as the threat of secondary flooding escalates.
Here in the Himalayas, the warming of the region is destabilising our cryosphere: our glaciers, our glacial lakes and our mountain slopes. With each year of record heat that passes, the risk of exactly this kind of catastrophe rises.
Therefore, beyond the early warning systems, we also need climate-resilient infrastructure, as well as locally led adaptation and disaster preparedness designed with and by the people who actually live with the risk. There must be meaningful investment in vulnerable communities, especially those downstream.
We need bridges, roads, hydropower and public facilities that can withstand floods, landslides and other cascading mountain hazards. We need locally led adaptation to encompass resilient public services, communications systems, livelihood protection and recovery support so that vulnerable downstream communities have the resources they need even before disaster strikes.
Nepal cannot do all this alone. Wealthy nations, which are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and thus most responsible for the present climate crisis, should not limit their response to repatriating their dead citizens from my country and issuing symbolic gestures of support.
They must now ensure that we have the finance we need to recover and rebuild from this loss, as well as withstand what is to come.
Climate funds should be delivered now, not as future pledges. Nepal should be able to draw from the Loss and Damage Fund so that direct and timely assistance can reach families, and homes, livelihoods and infrastructure can be rebuilt. It must be new money, not aid re-labelled, and must come as grants, not loans. It must be easy and fast to access, not buried in a bureaucratic process and a timeline set by the next climate summit.
Nepal contributes less than ۰.۱ percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet we are among the most climate-vulnerable nations on earth, where warming doesn’t arrive gradually but as a wall of water and mud tearing through a valley in minutes.
We are not asking for charity. We are demanding climate justice: to be compensated for suffering from a crisis we played almost no role in creating.
Being compensated for this disaster does not mean the Nepalese people will be just passive recipients of foreign funds. Nepalese society has already mobilised to help fellow citizens struck by the disaster.
The response of young people in particular has been quick and unequivocal. Across Nepal, the youth have organised a Rasuwa Relief Group, mobilising resources, coordinating support and sharing verified information.
As I write this, an army of youth is signing up to volunteer for relief and rescue operations on the ground. It is a powerful reminder that young people are not only among the most vulnerable to climate change. We are also its first responders. We are leaders in moments of crisis, even when no one asked us to be.
Seven years ago, I showed up to my first meeting of young climate activists, unsure if anyone would listen. Watching this generation mobilise in real time, faster and more effectively than most institutional responses, tells me the work of the past years has not been in vain.
If there is one lesson I want people to take from what happened to Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading, it is this: climate action cannot stop at mitigation targets and policy conferences, in rooms where conversations are slow and meandering like lazy rivers.
When our leaders sit down to decide what happens next, the youth and the most affected, vulnerable communities must be given a seat at the table. Perhaps listening to their voices can save us from the next disaster.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
