The response to Nepal’s disaster is a test for global climate institutions

Dharam R Uprety is head of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.

The climate crisis didn’t just knock at our doorstep. It has smashed through homes, demolished critical roads, and caused untold grief for millions of Nepali people. It has now been nearly a month since a wall of ice, rock, and water tore through the Bhote Koshi river system. The death toll has risen to nearly 1,500 people with 5,800 more still missing. 

Dharam R Uprety is head of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.

The climate crisis didn’t just knock at our doorstep. It has smashed through homes, demolished critical roads, and caused untold grief for millions of Nepali people. It has now been nearly a month since a wall of ice, rock, and water tore through the Bhote Koshi river system. The death toll has risen to nearly 1,500 people with 5,800 more still missing. 

Nepal needs sustained assistance from the international community. 

We are staring at a reconstruction bill of at least $5 billion, as we laid out in our letter to the co-chairs of the Board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage on September 1. This constitutes a tenth of our entire economy, and we cannot afford to be saddled with greater loans. We asked the Board to treat the Bhote Koshi disaster as the special case that it is: sudden, unprecedented and exceptional. 

The Loss and Damage fund currently holds $820 million in pledges, yet not a single dollar has yet been disbursed for the nearly $3 billion in requests. Its next scheduled meeting is not until December, in Manila. Nepal cannot wait that long, and neither can the next country this happens to. 

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The tragedy must also serve as a wake up call for immediate climate action. A new study from the World Weather Attribution has found that global warming was a likely contributing factor for the avalanche. 

Bandaid solutions are no longer enough; the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels and accelerate investment in clean sources of energy.

Disproportionate impact

The Nepal government has set an ambitious target to replace petrol/diesel vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) by 2031. The country also already gets most of its electricity from clean sources, with plans for further expansion within the next decade. Our forest cover has grown to 46 percent. 

Nepal contributes less than 0.1 percent of the planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Major polluters need to step up their efforts, so that countries like mine stop bearing a disproportionate impact.

Global emissions are still rising, while countries such as the US, the UK, Australia and several others have drastically reduced the foreign aid that they provide to the rest of the world. And at the same time, they are continuing to increase their fossil fuel production. That is not only unjust, it is also unsustainable for a planet that is already showing us how little room for error remains. 

What happened in Bhote Koshi is not unique to the Hindu Kush Himalaya. In May 2025, a nearly identical disaster buried the Swiss village of Blatten, when a rock and ice avalanche tore off the Birch Glacier above it. A study published this month found the avalanche needed almost no friction to travel as far and as fast as it did, a sign of just how destabilised that mountainside had become.

In the Arctic, researchers reported this week that thawing permafrost on the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen turned an ordinary magnitude 6.5 earthquake into the island’s first major glacier rock avalanche in 40 years, the kind of tremor that would once have caused only minor disruption.

From the Alps to the Arctic to the Himalaya, the same warming is loosening the ice and rock that used to hold these mountains together. The next Bhote Koshi could strike anywhere that grip is failing.

Growing focus on mountains in UN climate process

This is not the first time we have tried to get the world’s attention on the mountain ecosystem. At COP30 in Belem last November, Nepal led the push to put mountains on the global climate agenda for the first time, through our Sagarmatha to Belém initiative.

That effort got mountain ecosystems written into the COP30 cover decision and the Global Goal on Adaptation, marking the strongest visibility mountain issues have ever received at the UN climate process. We also secured the first Annual Dialogue on Mountains and Climate Change, which was held at the UN climate talks in June this year at Bonn.

We used COP30 as a platform to warn that retreating glaciers and destabilised mountain systems were not a distant risk. Ten months later, that warning became the Bhote Koshi disaster.

The UN General Assembly and upcoming UN climate talks in Antalya will be two fora for world leaders to show solidarity and more importantly, show how they intend to walk the talk. 

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In the near-term, the Loss and Damage board has been requested to hold an emergency meeting to consider Nepal’s difficult situation. Several nations have generously stepped up to offer physical relief and direct aid. This is greatly welcome. Our needs, unfortunately, far exceed that.

Every impacted village needs a chance to rebuild, children need to see their schools back in operation, and the roads that are the lifeline of communities require urgent reconstruction. Some things may have been lost permanently, but through investment in monitoring and early warning systems, the government of Nepal can try to ensure a future event does not unfold yet another unimaginable tragedy. 

This was not just someone else’s disaster that affected the people of Dhading, Rasuwa, and Nuwakot. It is a shared emergency, across Nepal and the world over as more and more communities become victims to a crisis they did not create. This is why, even as we cope with relief and rescue efforts, we are taking the time to present data and share our needs around this climate injustice.