As Nepal rebuilds, a climate-vulnerable nation tests the world’s response

On 26 August, an avalanche of ice, rock, water and debris, triggered by a glacial break-off, gushed downstream at a speed of almost 50 metres per second, tearing through Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts and impacting communities almost 100 km away. It claimed almost 1,400 lives, with more than 5,000 still missing, as authorities continue search operations.

The disaster was not simply the result of a single extreme weather event. A synthesis by World Weather Attribution scientists and international glaciologists found that a combination of geological and climatic factors contributed to the catastrophic rock and ice collapse, with decades of human-caused warming likely preconditioning the mountain for failure.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah is due to address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 24, where Nepal plans to highlight the losses it has suffered from climate-related disasters and its disproportionate vulnerability, despite contributing little to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Nepal says it will seek immediate and appropriate compensation through mechanisms including the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), as well as accessible and concessional climate finance and technology from developed countries for climate-resilient infrastructure, climate-smart agriculture and capacity building.

More than 100 countries have already sought funding totalling nearly $3 billion from FRLD. The Fund, established in 2022 at COP27 to provide financial support to vulnerable countries to cope with climate change, has received pledges of around $800 million. Only a fraction of that money is currently available for programmes.

The disaster is already shaping expectations for the next round of climate negotiations. Ajay Mathur, Professor at the School of Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and a former Indian climate negotiator, said the floods had “rattled negotiators across all developing countries” and would almost certainly lead to calls for more resources for the Loss and Damage Fund at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey. “So this will come onto the agenda, whether we like it or not,” he said.

Nepal’s Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment estimates total damage from the disaster at $1.8 billion, with losses of about $883 million and reconstruction needs of $4.78 billion. A more comprehensive Post-Disaster Needs Assessment is still underway.

As search and rescue operations continue, Nepal is also seeking specialised equipment and supplies from international partners while preparing to take the disaster and its longer-term climate needs to the UNGA.

Also Read: Can the nascent Loss and Damage Fund deliver for Nepal?

The gap between those needs and available international finance has sharpened a longstanding question in climate negotiations: who pays for the resilience vulnerable countries need?

Developing countries have spent years pushing developed countries to deliver more public climate finance, including for adaptation and loss and damage. But as international finance remains inadequate and slow, there is also a debate over what regional powers and emerging economies can do to prepare for risks that cannot wait for multilateral processes.

Nepal will also host a UNGA side event, “Sagarmatha to the Sea: A Call to Action for a Climate-Resilient Future”, focused on the impacts of climate change on the Himalayas and the consequences for countries downstream.

BRICS talked disaster preparedness, Nepal needs more

The recent BRICS summit in New Delhi acknowledged the growing complexity of disaster risks, including those linked to climate change. Its declaration stressed the importance of disaster-risk reduction, climate adaptation, information sharing and investment in early-warning systems and disaster-resilient infrastructure. It also called for greater cooperation to strengthen national emergency systems.

But the declaration did not specifically respond to Nepal’s disaster.

Also Read: BRICS Has a Resilience Blueprint. Financing it is the Challenge

With international moments like UNGA and COP31 coming up, experts say BRICS could still provide a platform for regional cooperation on disaster preparedness, data sharing and financing.

“What we need to do is operationalise the pledges that have been made, and emphasise that adaptation finance should get equal weightage, not just mitigation finance,” said Ulka Kelkar, Executive Director of Climate, Economics & Finance at World Resources Institute India. “But that $300 billion per year target [as agreed upon at COP29] is far from being met.”

Nepal has clarified that it is not seeking compensation from any specific country. Its position is that developed countries have responsibilities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement, while regional cooperation with neighbouring countries is needed on disaster preparedness, data sharing and resilience.

Avantika Goswami, Programme Manager, Climate Change and Green Economy at the Centre for Science and Environment, said the “onus” for providing funds to the FRLD is on developed countries.

“The money pledged [by developed countries] is 11 times more than the claimed money. It is not being honoured. Any support that should come from developing countries should be voluntary. India and China are already providing aid to Nepal.”

She added that for low and middle income countries, every disaster requires rebuilding and recovery, which further strains limited domestic budgets already spread thin across multiple competing objectives. To allocate more to climate adaptation, there is also limited ability to raise taxes on the population. 

In a fractured geopolitical landscape and slow multilateral system, some experts see a case for regional mechanisms that can provide faster support.

Mathur has proposed resilience and insurance pools for specific regions in the Global South through established regional country pacts. “Operating as a rapid-payout parametric insurance pool, funds would be released automatically upon satellite detection of threshold climate triggers,” he said.

Also Read: Beyond a First Responder: India must Co-Underwrite Himalayan Loss & Damage

Getting support through the FRLD can also face procedural limits. According to Kelkar, the mechanism is not designed for rapid payouts and is still in its startup and learning phase. At present, the upper limit of funding that can be requested for one country is $20 million.

The Adaptation Fund is also falling short of demand. In April 2026, it received 94 project proposals worth $1.33 billion, while approving projects worth about $134 million.

Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris Agreement, said world leaders should not allow geopolitics to push the disaster off the political agenda. “We can’t ignore what has happened in Nepal,” she said, pointing to similar concerns after Pakistan’s floods and the debt burden faced by island nations rebuilding after disasters.

Early warnings face a new problem

The WWA synthesis found that climate change has raised temperatures in the collapse region by about 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels during July and August, and by about 2°C annually. The freezing threshold in the high Himalayas has risen by roughly 100 metres per decade, exposing ice and permafrost deep in the bedrock to higher and longer thaw temperatures.

The scientists linked this warming to glacier thinning, permafrost thaw and increased meltwater, which can weaken the ice and rock holding high mountain slopes together. July and August 2026, immediately before the collapse, were the warmest on record locally, while heavy snowfall in October and November 2025 added substantial meltwater in the months preceding the disaster.

Also Read: Climate Change is Reshaping Disaster Risk across the Himalayas

The 2015 earthquake in the region, which measured 7.8 magnitude, may also have contributed to destabilising the slope, although its specific contribution cannot yet be confirmed, said the synthesis report.

The findings point to a monitoring challenge that goes beyond forecasting rainfall. Glaciers and high-altitude permafrost respond to temperature changes over decades, meaning warming that has already occurred may continue to affect mountain stability even if temperatures were to stop rising.

According to a 2025 study, Himalayan glaciers are expected to warm faster than the global average, with temperature increases ranging from 2°C to 5°C by 2100. Under a high-emissions scenario, Himalayan glaciers could lose up to 60% of their ice mass by 2100.

“The Himalayas face higher temperature rise because of elevation-dependent warming,” said Anjal Prakash, an IPCC author and Professor of Public Policy at FLAME University, attributing rapid glacial melt to global heating.

“These glaciers are in critical zones. They are highly vulnerable, and high temperatures can lead to cracks in the glaciers. In Nepal, a small portion of a large glacier broke off and fell,” he said.

According to Prakash, when such a glacial fall or glacial lake outburst flood occurs, the response time to evacuate people can be as little as 30-40 minutes.

In this particular case, the time between the glacier breaking off and the flood thundering through the valley was only a few minutes, estimated glaciologist SN Remya, an assistant professor at India’s Azim Premji University.

Even if a warning had been transmitted, there may not have been enough time to evacuate communities.

“This was an unprecedented and unexpected disaster. There was simply no detection and no time to issue a warning. The event was a sudden-onset hazard that could not be captured by conventional warning systems,” said Dr Farooq Azam, Senior Cryosphere Specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

The question is therefore not simply whether Nepal has an early-warning system, but whether existing systems can detect hazards that begin within glaciers, permafrost and unstable mountain slopes and then move downstream within minutes.

Also Read: The Himalayas need a cross-border disaster-warning system

Since the Himalayan mountain range spans multiple countries, another question is whether information about conditions upstream could reach downstream communities sooner.

According to Reuters, Nepal had asked China three months before the disaster to share data on meteorology, rainfall and river conditions, but a formal data-sharing agreement had not been finalised.

A Chinese spokesperson, however, said after the disaster that China and Nepal had been in communication on search and rescue, information sharing and prevention of secondary disasters, and that China had provided meteorological and hydrological data and early-warning information.

Madhavan Rajeevan, Vice Chancellor of Atria University and former Secretary of India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences, called for an integrated monitoring system covering the Himalayas.

“The first thing that needs to happen is an integrated, multi-hazard Himalayan monitoring system with meteorological, hydrological, geological, seismic and cryospheric observations between India, Nepal and China,” he said.

“Second, transboundary data sharing must become an essential part of Himalayan disaster management,” he said. “High-risk glaciers, glacial lakes and unstable slopes should be monitored continuously using optical satellite imagery and synthetic-aperture radar (SAR). Third, forecasting must evolve from simply predicting hazards to impact-based early warning.”

The limits of monitoring the Himalayas

Building such a system across the Himalayas is itself a major challenge.

In rock-ice avalanches, establishing a warning system is difficult because the points of failure can sometimes lie below the bedrock or glaciers and may not be visible through satellites or from the ground, Azam explained.

Rajeevan has advocated a multi-layered monitoring system, but other experts are concerned about its economic viability given the size of the Himalayas.

“We cannot realistically expect to have any kind of satellite-based, continuous monitoring system which can help us predict such disasters over the next decade, as the technology is limited and expensive to deploy. Because of the scale of the Himalayas, and the amount of investment needed, it will always be inadequate,” said Argha Banerjee, who chairs the Earth and Science department at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune.

According to a study by ICIMOD, there are 63,700 glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region. But that study managed to monitor only 38, of which 89% recorded loss in mass since 1974, while average annual loss more than doubled after 2000.

The workaround is to install simple, inexpensive local monitoring systems that can be operated and maintained by communities. Along with that, robust communication channels need to be established so that locals can get at least 10-15 minutes of warning in case such disasters strike, Banerjee told CarbonCopy.

Weather monitoring stations also remain too sparse and scattered to gather reliable real-time information.

“Weather can be vastly different from one valley to the next. For every sensitive area, we need monitoring stations at the higher reaches of the valley,” he said.

Such monitoring methods can also have benefits for local communities. Scientific data from monitoring glacial lakes can be used to build mitigation and resilience systems, Remya said.

“If a lake is determined to be vulnerable, water has to be drained out. There are systems where this water can be provided to the village for drinking or irrigation. Also, there are many dried springs located close to the glaciers. If these can be revived or recharged, it will be beneficial for transporting the water away,” she said.

While these conversations build up, the disaster leaves Nepal facing limits on both sides of the climate response. Early-warning systems and disaster planning can reduce exposure, but they cannot necessarily prevent losses when hazards develop faster than they can be detected. 

At the same time, countries need resources not only to respond after disasters, but to monitor glaciers and slopes, strengthen infrastructure and redesign development around risks that past climate data may no longer capture.

As Nepal takes its case to the UNGA, its experience is therefore testing two parts of the global climate response at once: whether climate finance can reach vulnerable countries at the scale and speed required, and whether adaptation systems can keep pace with a Himalayan landscape already being altered by decades of warming.

As Remya put it: “We cannot control climate change, but we have to prepare for whatever happens.”

[Additional Inputs: Bhasker Tripathi, Production: Paridhi Choudhary]