Disasters are not only tests of our resilience; they are tests of our preparedness, our institutions and, ultimately, our leadership. The loss of lives and destruction left behind by the floods should force us to ask not only how we respond when disaster strikes, but what we could have done before it did, and what we must do differently if and before the next one.
Saubhagya Pradhananga, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Culture,Tourism and Civil Aviation
One important lesson Nepal must learn from the tragic Rasuwa flood is that development should not compete with nature. It should move forward by working with nature, maintaining ecological balance, and using local and indigenous knowledge. Indigenous and local communities have lived together with the mountains, rivers, forests, grazing lands, and water sources for generations.
Their traditional knowledge includes respecting the natural flow of rivers, avoiding settlements in risky areas, protecting forests and watersheds, understanding water sources, and recognising possible risks by observing changes in weather and nature.
Therefore, when building infrastructure such as roads, hydropower projects, bridges, and settlements in Nepal’s sensitive areas, local ecological knowledge, geography, the history of rivers, and the experiences of local communities must be an essential part of development decisions. From the planning stage itself, there should be a clear study of where to build, how to build, and what nature can safely support.
Nepal must adopt a simple guiding principle: development should not try to defeat nature; it should understand and work with nature. Development that respects nature is the foundation of a safe and sustainable future.
Dr Sweata Sijapati, National Coordinator, GeoHazards International
The recent Rasuwa event wasn’t simply a “flood,” as Nepal’s monsoon planning assumes. It began as rock-ice-avalanche, caused glacier collapse, triggered a landslide, generated seismic tremors, and culminated in a flash flood, a textbook cascading, multi-hazard event. This is precisely the gap our work has flagged: Nepal lacks a clear understanding of how hazards interact, and landslides remain less understood than floods despite being closely linked.
Nepal’s disaster planning still sorts hazards into administrative silos: one plan for earthquakes, another for monsoons, reflecting how conventional plans are written and managed, not how disasters unfold. Earthquakes destabilise slopes that can fail in monsoons; monsoons saturate slopes that can fail during earthquakes.
The Rasuwa event shows warming climate adds a third axis: thawing permafrost and retreating glaciers that current plans barely address. Nepal needs a risk framework that accounts for hazard interactions and connects science, planning, and action before cascading hazards become disasters.
Dr Prakash Bhattarai, Executive Director, Centre for Social Change
For many years the mountains have been warning us, and at Bhotekoshi they spoke louder than they ever have. The lesson is not that we need better sirens or a bigger compensation claim, though we need both. The lesson is that we have been building a country the mountains cannot hold. We ran roads to the water’s edge, filled the gorges with powerhouses and replaced the stone and timber houses that stood above the flood line with concrete on the bank, and we called all of it progress. Growth that the river can take back is not growth.
The Nepal I want to see after this tragedy is one that measures development by what survives. Settlements sit where the water cannot reach them. Rivers are given room before they take it. Every road, plant and market is planned for the climate we have, not the one we remember. And this is written into law, budgets and the instincts of every leader who signs a plan. If we do that,
Bhotekoshi becomes the moment Nepal stopped reacting to the Himalaya and began living with it. If we do not, it becomes one more name on a list that will only grow longer.
DIKSHYA SUBEDI, Climate Justice Activist
When the recent flash floods tore through Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading, they washed away more than just roads and bridges. They took homes, livelihoods, farms, and the quiet security of everyday life. I have spent over seven years advocating for climate action and warning about the escalating threats facing our communities. But when disaster sweeps through my own home, it is no longer just a policy issue or a distant talking point. If this tragedy has taught us anything, it is that we can no longer afford to treat disaster preparedness as an afterthought. We cannot simply wait for the next crisis to strike.
Our Himalayan landscape is becoming increasingly fragile and complex. Extreme rainfall, shifting glaciers, and unstable slopes are creating cascading risks that we must anticipate. We urgently need stronger early-warning systems, scientific risk mapping, resilient infrastructure, and locally led preparedness plans.
And when we recover, we cannot simply rebuild what was lost. We must build back safer and more climate-resilient, ensuring that families are never forced to return to unsafe, vulnerable areas. But true preparedness and recovery require something much larger than local resilience: they require global accountability. Ultimately, our survival must go hand in hand with climate justice.
SHREYA KC, Climate Justice Activist
What we witnessed in Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading was a Himalayan tsunami: more than 1300 lives lost, thousands still missing, and profound mental trauma and despair among the survivors, all of which constitute losses. The destruction of homes, roads, and hydropower infrastructure shows immense damage. Nepal must demand reparations from those most responsible, including fossil fuel companies, that have earned colossal profits while communities like ours bear the consequences.
We must demand new, additional, accessible, adequate, and grant-based climate and loss and damage finance. But we cannot just wait for international action. We must do everything within our capacity to protect our people by urgently relocating settlements exposed to escalating climate risks. And, as we pursue hydropower as ‘clean energy’, Indigenous peoples and local communities cannot continue to bear the costs through the loss of their lives, livelihoods, and homes.
