Image: SUBASH DHUNGANA/RSS/NEPALI TIMES
Water in Nepal is worshipped in temples and feared in streets. Each summer as the monsoon barrels across the Himalayas, reverence gives way to retreat. Homes are submerged, roads collapse, families are uprooted. What used to be seasonal inconvenience has become an annual siege. Between June and October more than 70% of the country’s rainfall arrives, frequently within weeks, overwhelming rivers; sweeping away villages; killing people; and stalling the economy. With climate change pushing glaciers to melt and rainfall to intensify, the country is drowning in water and running out of excuses.
In the early hours of June 8th a flood in the Bhote Koshi River killed at least seven people and swept away the Friendship Bridge in Rasuwa, the main trade artery with China. Cargo, police and passengers disappeared into the flood. Hydropower plants fell silent. Helicopters airlifted dozens. Others remain missing. Such disasters are not new. What is new is their frequency and their force. (Last year more than 490 people died due to monsoon-related disasters.)
Elsewhere on July 4th, as Texas mourned 88 lives swept away in a flood, attention turned once again to the physics of a warming planet. Hotter air holds more moisture, and when that moisture falls, it wreaks havoc. Glacial melt in the Himalayas adds to the flood risk, sending water cascading into the plains below. Yet though the science is global, the suffering is local. And in Nepal the solutions remain as thin as its topsoil during monsoon washouts.
Its southern neighbour provides a blueprint for survival. Bangladesh, historically a byword for flood misery, has mastered the art of living with water. From early warning systems to raised homes and community shelters it has turned adaptation into infrastructure and resilience into routine. Notwithstanding being flatter and more densely populated, the country has lowered flood fatalities and economic losses through investments Nepal has yet to mimic.
The first lesson is forewarning. Bangladesh has built an information ecosystem that extends from satellite to speaker. SMS alerts, mosque loudspeakers, FM radios and local volunteers form a layered communications net. The system generates data and delivers it to people who need it. Nepal, despite decades of donor-funded disaster planning, remains sporadic and passive in this regard. Rural floodplains are regularly warned too late or not at all. Integrating real-time mobile alerts in local languages, broadcast through ward offices and religious leaders, would be an inexpensive upgrade with high returns.
Infrastructure too need not always be grand. Bangladesh’s low-cost “plinths”—raised earthen mounds where houses and livestock can perch—have saved countless lives. Such measures are cheap and scalable and decentralised. Nepal meanwhile persists in building embankments that often breach or backfire. A national campaign promoting elevated homesteads, backed by subsidies and building codes, would embody a departure from concrete bravado to muddy pragmatism.
Urban areas face a parallel crisis. Cities like Kathmandu and Biratnagar, which used to be flood-immune due to their altitude or low density, are now regularly inundated. The culprit, rather than nature, is design. Paved roads and disappearing green spaces leave water nowhere to go. The country has built cities to repel rain and not absorb it. China’s “sponge cities” initiative, which aims to retain 80% of rainfall through permeable pavements, green roofs and sunken parks, presents an urban gospel worth emulating. Municipalities here could start by mandating permeable surfaces in new developments and retrofitting pavements with porous materials.
Kathmandu’s historic ponds—like Rani Pokhari and Kamal Pokhari—served as flood buffers in the past. Today they are aesthetic ornaments, paved over or reduced to decorative puddles. Reviving those water bodies as functional reservoirs would reclaim both their purpose and their symbolism. In Rotterdam playgrounds double as storm basins. In Nepal schoolyards and public squares could do the same, if not turned into car parks first.
Drainage is a less visible but more urgent problem. Much of the sewerage system in Kathmandu is a colonial relic, frequently clogged by plastic waste and haphazard construction. Separating stormwater from sewage, upgrading old pipelines and mapping drainage routes may lack political glamour but they determine whether a city floods in hours or drains in minutes. In London a new “super sewer” costing billions has been built, preventing 5m tons of sewage from entering Thames. Nepal can settle for one that functions.
Floods expose the vulnerability of the poor most acutely. In Kathmandu informal settlements along the Bagmati and Bishnumati rivers are home to tens of thousands. These areas have neither drainage nor escape routes. In 2021 a mid-monsoon downpour displaced hundreds overnight. A planned programme of gradual relocation, slum upgrading, legalisation—similar to Brazil’s “favela urbanisation” schemes—would be more humane and more realistic than repeated evictions.
In the countryside relocation is politically sensitive. But it is becoming economically inevitable. By 2050 one in seven Bangladeshis could become climate migrants. Nepal, though less densely populated, is on a similar path. The Tarai region, a flat strip bordering India, hosts most of the flood-prone population. A national resettlement strategy combined with flood insurance and emergency cash transfers would help households move before they are forced to flee.
Finance remains the missing piece. Bangladesh’s success has been underwritten by long-term donor funding; multilateral support; and strong local institutions. Nepal by contrast has cycled through donor-driven disaster plans that rarely outlive the political cycle. What it lacks in fiscal muscle, it could compensate with moral capital. As a low-emissions country on the climate frontlines, it is well-placed to demand international adaptation funds, though doing so would mean a more coherent national strategy and less bureaucratic improvisation.
Urban resilience too cannot be left to engineers alone. Culture shapes disaster outcomes as much as concrete does. In Bangladesh flood drills are practised in schools. Households keep emergency bags. Community volunteers lead evacuations. In Nepal floods are too often seen as fated events, to be endured rather than mitigated. Shifting that mindset will require public education campaigns and local preparedness days. And perhaps a touch of civic embarrassment.
Policymakers would do well to remember that floods do not strike without warning. They arrive each year, in the same season, via the same rivers. What is unpredictable is the extent to which cities and countryside will be ready. As Bangladesh shows preparation need not be expensive, only consistent. The water will come. Whether it leaves behind debris or dignity depends on what gets built before it arrives. ■