On 26 August, the Bhotekoshi did something few of us had imagined it could do. A climate-induced ice-and-rock avalanche high in the mountains turned into a wall of debris and water that roared down the Bhotekoshi–Trishuli corridor. Those who watched the footage said it looked less like a river in flood and more like an animated video, houses, bridges and powerhouses vanishing frame by frame. But it was not a film. Some 15,000 households across Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading were affected, dozens of bridges were swept away, and 13 hydropower projects were damaged. The government’s Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment puts the cost of recovery and reconstruction at NPR 723 billion, roughly USD 4.7 billion. The flood was beyond our imagination. Our response cannot be.
This was not an isolated shock. In August 2024, glacial lakes burst above Thame in the Everest region. In May 2025, two small glacial lakes gave way above Tilgau in Humla. In July 2025, a flash flood on this same Bhote Koshi corridor swept away the Friendship Bridge at Rasuwagadhi. Barely a year later, ice and rock broke away from Langtang Lirung. And on 11 October, only six weeks after that, a landslide-dam breach near Chumchet sent a debris flood down the Budhi Gandaki in Gorkha – another tributary of the same Trishuli system, sweeping away houses and bridges and damaging the Budhi Gandaki hydropower site. Events once described as once-in-a-generation are now arriving almost every season, and each one strikes communities that have not yet recovered from the last.
An attribution analysis by World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that fossil fuel-driven warming contributed to both the occurrence and the intensity of the 26 August disaster. The scientists described climate change as a destabilizing factor on a slope already weakened by geology, the 2015 earthquake, glacier retreat and thawing permafrost, with temperatures at high altitude staying above freezing for the two weeks before the collapse. Their findings also expose the limits of adaptation in fast-warming mountains: even good early-warning systems may not foresee a collapse of this scale.
That is why this is a question of climate justice. Nepal has contributed only a tiny fraction of the emissions heating the planet, yet the families of Rasuwa are paying with their homes, their land and their lives. For them, loss and damage is not an agenda item in a negotiating text. It is a question of whether their community survives at all.And much of what has been lost can never be compensated or recovered. No amount of money can restore the lives lost in the flood. No reconstruction budget can repair the bonds between neighbors scattered to temporary shelters, the trauma and stress that survivors carry, or the broken connection with the ancestral land where their forebears lived, farmed and are remembered. Social cohesion built over generations does not appear in any damage assessment, but its loss is real and permanent.
With COP31 opening in Antalya on 9 November, Kathmandu is still in internal discussion about how to present itself. The Prime Minister’s address at the UN General Assembly, and the Foreign Minister’s bilateral and side events, have raised high hopes that Nepal will arrive with a strong voice. But expectations are not outcomes. Unless we arrive with a clear message and a concrete proposal, we risk losing an opportunity that Nepal must cash in on.
Nepali movie 'Hori' selected at Torino Film Lab
There is reason for cautious pride. Last week the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) held its first-ever extraordinary Board meeting and allocated about USD 21.6 million to Nepal, the first allocation the Fund has made to any country. Credit is due to our leaders and to the least developed countries, small island states and others who stood behind our request.
But we must be honest about scale. The allocation is less than half of one percent of our assessed need. And it is an allocation, not money in hand: Nepal must still prepare and submit a project proposal and win approval before a single rupee reaches families in Rasuwa. Two months after the flood, with winter approaching, survivors are still waiting.
This is the larger story: slow money and slow talks. The loss and damage fund was agreed at COP27 in 2022 and operationalized a year later, yet its pot remains small, and the gap between what has been pledged and what has actually been paid in remains a standing question. At COP29 in Baku, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance settled for USD 300 billion a year by 2035, with only an aspiration to reach USD 1.3 trillion – and no clear answer on where that money will come from. Negotiations move one COP at a time. Glaciers and debris flows do not wait for consensus.
Nepal’s demand at COP31 must go beyond asking for funds. We should demand that the empty pot be filled: predictable, grant-based replenishment of the FRLD; a standing rapid-response window, so the next country hit does not have to wait for an extraordinary Board meeting; and a credible roadmap from USD 300 billion to USD 1.3 trillion. At the same time, we should bring something to the table that the world needs.
Studies and future risk assessments have already made it clear that resettling people in the same stretch of the valley is not possible. The affected, scarred land, unstable and unforgettable – will remain. The question is what we do with it.
Nepal can turn this area into a global living lab for climate science and disaster resilience. Because the flood originated in the high mountains, geologists and glaciologists can study how ice, rock and debris behave in a warming Himalaya. Disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) experts can test new approaches to early warning, risk-sensitive land use and recovery planning. Climate scientists can use the event for attribution research that strengthens the evidence base for loss and damage claims, including Nepal’s own. And students, universities and communities from home and abroad can come for exposure visits that no textbook can match.
Alongside the lab, a disaster museum can document the corridor’s “then and now” photographs, testimonies, scientific data, and the slow work of rebuilding, creating a living library that serves for decades. Research fees, visitor tickets, guided tours, training programs and homestays can generate a steady income. That revenue should flow directly back to the affected community, managed transparently, to finance livelihoods and resilience. The site of loss becomes a source of recovery.
The idea also speaks to a gap in the system. Non-economic loss and damage, such as lives, culture, heritage, and a sense of place, sit outside the core calculation of damage assessments. A living lab and museum would preserve that memory, give it value, and let the community tell its own story rather than have it told for them.
This is not a substitute for international finance. The responsibility of major emitters does not end because a community finds its own way forward. But it shows that Nepal is not merely a recipient waiting at the door; it is a partner offering the world a place to learn how to live with climate extremes. Turning this community into a resilient one is a task the world wants to see succeed. We should invite the world in to help.
Climate has become political, at home and abroad. But a disaster like this must not be politicized – not in Kathmandu, where relief and reconstruction must never become a matter of party patronage, and not in the negotiating halls, where the suffering of mountain communities must never be traded as a bargaining chip. If it is, the question will no longer be about climate policy. It will be a question about our humanity.
In Antalya, Nepal should carry two things: a firm demand to fill the pot and speed up the flow, and an open invitation to a Bhotekoshi Living Lab. If we do, the flood that seemed beyond our imagination could become the place where the world learns what resilience looks like.
The author holds a PhD on climate change-induced non-economic loss and damage and is a climate professional who writes on climate policy and development in Nepal. The views expressed are personal and do not represent those of WWF Nepal.
