The devastating disaster in the Bhote Koshi corridor should serve as a turning point in Nepal’s approach to climate-resilient development. Beyond the immediate destruction of settlements, roads, bridges, and hydropower infrastructure, the disaster has exposed deeper weaknesses in land-use planning, settlement development, infrastructure investment, and disaster preparedness.
As Nepal prepares for the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the experience offers an important opportunity to transform a national tragedy into a compelling case for mountain resilience, climate justice, and sustainable development.
Nepal is on the frontline of the global climate crisis. Its fragile mountain geography, rapidly changing climatic conditions, and exposure to multiple natural hazards make it particularly vulnerable. More importantly, climate-related disasters in mountainous regions rarely occur in isolation. They often trigger cascading risks, affecting settlements, infrastructure, livelihoods, and economic activities across entire river corridors.
The Bhote Koshi disaster demonstrated precisely this interconnected nature of vulnerability. Its impacts were not confined to one settlement or administrative jurisdiction; they extended across different locations, communities, and infrastructure systems.
The disaster also highlighted a fundamental contradiction in Nepal’s development approach: development itself can generate new risks when it takes place without adequate consideration of geography, environmental sensitivity, and future climate conditions. Roads constructed along riverbanks, settlements concentrated in flood-prone areas, and infrastructure developed without comprehensive risk assessments can increase vulnerability rather than reduce it. Although risk-sensitive spatial planning is frequently emphasised in policy documents, its implementation remains weak. The consequences are becoming increasingly visible.
The concept of building back better must therefore be interpreted more broadly. It should not mean simply replacing damaged structures with stronger buildings.
The Bhote Koshi corridor provides an important illustration of how vulnerability varies geographically. In the upstream areas, population density may be relatively low, but the physical destruction caused by the disaster has been extensive. Further downstream, the concentration of settlements, economic activities, and infrastructure has increased the scale and complexity of the damage. This demonstrates why disaster assessments cannot rely on a uniform approach. Every section of a river corridor has distinct geological, environmental, social, and economic characteristics that must inform recovery and reconstruction decisions.
More importantly, the consequences of disasters should not be measured solely by the destruction of physical assets. Roads, bridges, houses, and hydropower projects represent only part of the overall loss. The disruption of livelihoods, displacement of communities, loss of access to markets and public services, and interruption of local economic activities have equally significant consequences. Recovery planning must therefore address three interconnected dimensions: restoring people’s lives and livelihoods, establishing safe places for settlement, and rebuilding infrastructure that can withstand future risks.
One of the most important lessons from the Bhote Koshi disaster concerns the location of settlements and infrastructure. A structurally strong building cannot guarantee safety if it is situated in an inherently hazardous location. The disaster has demonstrated that engineering resilience alone is insufficient when the geographical placement of infrastructure is fundamentally flawed. This raises a difficult but unavoidable question: should damaged roads, houses, and other infrastructure simply be reconstructed in their original locations, or should they be relocated to safer areas?
Rebuilding along the same riverbanks without reassessing the risks could reproduce the vulnerabilities that contributed to the disaster. Relocating infrastructure, however, is not a straightforward solution either. Roads often attract settlements, commercial activities, and new investments. A road relocated to an unsafe area can create another cycle of vulnerability. Therefore, reconstruction decisions must be guided by comprehensive risk assessments, geological investigations, environmental considerations, and long-term spatial planning.
The relocation of human settlements presents even more complex challenges. Resettlement cannot be treated simply as the construction of houses in a safer location. Communities have established social relationships, cultural connections, economic activities, and livelihood systems tied to their existing locations. Moving people without considering these factors can result in unsuccessful relocation, even when the new houses are physically safer.
Nepal’s experience following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake offers an important lesson. The resettlement initiative in Laprak, for example, has faced challenges in ensuring that relocated households fully occupy and use the newly constructed settlement. This demonstrates that safe housing alone does not guarantee sustainable resettlement. Access to farmland, employment, markets, schools, health facilities, and social networks must be considered from the beginning. Any relocation strategy in the Bhote Koshi corridor should therefore be developed through meaningful community participation and a clear understanding of local socioeconomic conditions.
Land ownership and land management create additional complications. Much of the potentially suitable land is privately owned, while the government’s instruments for land pooling, acquisition, land-use regulation, and planned settlement development remain limited. Public land availability and the possibility of public-private partnerships also require careful consideration. These challenges make it necessary to strengthen existing land management mechanisms and ensure that risk-sensitive land-use planning becomes an enforceable component of development practice.
Another major lesson concerns the need to manage entire river corridors rather than individual disaster sites. A river system must be understood from its headwaters to its downstream reaches, including its tributaries, floodplains, settlements, infrastructure, and ecological systems. Restricting interventions to locations already identified as high-risk will not address the underlying causes of vulnerability. Nepal needs integrated river-corridor planning that incorporates geological sensitivity, hydrological processes, ecological restoration, settlement patterns, and infrastructure requirements.
Hydropower development deserves particular attention in this context. Although hydropower is a major source of renewable energy and an important contributor to Nepal’s economic development and low-carbon transition, its concentration along river systems exposes projects to floods, landslides, sedimentation, and other hazards. The economic benefits of hydropower must therefore be assessed alongside cumulative environmental and disaster risks. Project approval and investment decisions should consider the carrying capacity of individual river basins, the safety of associated infrastructure, and the potential impacts on downstream communities. Renewable energy development cannot be considered sustainable if the infrastructure supporting it remains highly vulnerable to foreseeable hazards.
Nepal should also strengthen cooperation with other mountain countries, particularly Bhutan and nations across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region.
The experience of the Bhote Koshi corridor also raises questions about the way climate finance is mobilised and spent. Financing should not be limited to reconstructing damaged houses, roads, and bridges. Adequate resources must be allocated for geological and hydrological investigations, comprehensive risk assessments, land-use planning, ecosystem restoration, and long-term monitoring. Investment in prevention and risk reduction is essential to avoid repeatedly spending public resources on rebuilding infrastructure in hazardous locations.
Scientific research and cross-border cooperation are equally important. Nepal’s major river systems and mountain ecosystems are interconnected with those of neighbouring countries, particularly China and India. Understanding transboundary hazards requires scientific information, coordinated monitoring, data exchange, and joint research. The Bhote Koshi disaster should encourage stronger regional cooperation in mountain hazard assessment, early warning systems, glacier monitoring, and river-corridor management. Without reliable data and scientific evidence, even well-intentioned reconstruction programmes may fail to address the underlying risks.
The concept of building back better must therefore be interpreted more broadly. It should not mean simply replacing damaged structures with stronger buildings. It must involve reconsidering where development takes place, how settlements are organised, how infrastructure is designed, and how livelihoods are protected. Traditional approaches to compact and safer settlement development, combined with contemporary risk-sensitive planning and blue-green infrastructure networks, can provide useful foundations for more resilient communities. Protecting river corridors, restoring natural drainage systems, conserving ecosystems, and maintaining appropriate development setbacks should become integral components of reconstruction.
Governance capacity is another decisive factor. Nepal already has policies and institutional frameworks addressing land-use planning, disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, and resilient infrastructure. The fundamental weakness is not necessarily the absence of policies but the failure to translate them into effective implementation. Provincial and local governments need stronger technical and institutional capacities to undertake risk assessments, prepare investment-ready projects, enforce land-use regulations, and deliver public services. Climate finance should support these capacities rather than focus exclusively on physical reconstruction.
Against this background, COP31 offers Nepal an opportunity to advance a practical mountain resilience agenda. The Bhote Koshi experience can serve as a concrete example of how climate-related hazards affect mountain settlements, infrastructure, and livelihoods, and why conventional approaches to reconstruction are insufficient. Nepal should use this experience to advocate for stronger international recognition of mountain ecosystems and communities, increased investment in climate-resilient infrastructure, accessible climate finance, and effective mechanisms for addressing loss and damage.
Climate leadership is not simply about negotiating at international conferences. It is about how a country plans, invests, builds, protects, and recovers.
The mountain agenda must be connected to climate adaptation, resilient development, and climate justice. Nepal’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is negligible, yet its mountain communities are experiencing increasingly severe consequences of global warming. The international community must recognise that protecting mountain ecosystems is not merely a national responsibility. The Himalayas support freshwater systems, biodiversity, agriculture, and livelihoods across South Asia. Their resilience is therefore closely linked to regional and global environmental security.
Nepal should also strengthen cooperation with other mountain countries, particularly Bhutan and nations across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region. Joint initiatives to keep global warming within the 1.5°C limit and advance mountain resilience can help establish a stronger regional negotiating position. The proposed mountain agenda should not remain an occasional discussion at international conferences; it should become a sustained component of global climate cooperation.
Five interconnected priorities deserve particular attention in Nepal’s engagement at COP31: establishing mountain resilience as a central international climate agenda; securing adequate and accessible climate finance, including support for loss and damage; promoting climate-resilient settlement and infrastructure development; strengthening adaptation through risk-sensitive land-use planning and ecosystem protection; and advancing climate justice through stronger international and regional cooperation.
Ultimately, Nepal’s climate leadership will not be determined merely by the positions it presents at international negotiations or the commitments it secures from development partners. It will depend on how effectively the country translates those commitments into safer settlements, resilient infrastructure, protected ecosystems, and secure livelihoods. The Bhote Koshi disaster has exposed the consequences of development that overlooks geographical realities. It has also created an opportunity to demonstrate a different approach.
Climate leadership is not simply about negotiating at international conferences. It is about how a country plans, invests, builds, protects, and recovers. If Nepal can transform the Bhote Koshi corridor into a model of risk-sensitive reconstruction and mountain resilience, it will have a powerful example to present at COP31. The real test of leadership will be whether the country can prevent the next disaster from becoming another cycle of destruction and reconstruction.
(Edited excerpts from the remarks delivered by Professor Dr. Sangeeta Singh of the Institute of Engineering Studies at a symposium under the theme “Nepal After UNGA: From Climate Victims to Climate Leadership” organized by the Institute for Strategic and Socio-Economic Research (ISSR) and Khabarhub in Kathmandu on Monday.)
Comment