A valley buried under 100 kilometres of debris
On the morning of 26 August, a glacier high on Langtang Lirung in Langtang National Park partly collapsed. The slope failure sent a debris flow and flood racing almost 100 kilometres down the Lende Khola and Trishuli rivers, past the Rasuwagadhi border post between Nepal and China, through villages, hydropower sites and roads.
More than a week later the confirmed death toll passed 1,000, according to the Associated Press, after rescuers recovered hundreds of bodies and families held mass burials. Hundreds more people remained missing, many of them workers at hydropower projects along the river. Landslides and destroyed roads cut off remote valleys and slowed the search. Nepal's government sent a disaster alert 38 minutes after the collapse, a delay that officials and local media said was not enough to clear the valley. Satellite images showed the glacier speeding up for weeks beforehand, but no warning was issued.
Thin ice, slow money
The disaster fits a wider pattern. Glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya, which stretches from Afghanistan to Myanmar, lost ice 65% faster between 2011 and 2020 than in the previous decade. The United Nations said in 2023 that Nepal's glaciers had lost close to one-third of their ice volume in roughly three decades.
Nepal produces almost no greenhouse gas emissions, yet it sits between two of the world's largest emitters, India and China, and bears the consequences of a warming range that feeds rivers supplying water to well over a billion people. Melting also creates unstable lakes and steep slopes, raising the risk of exactly the kind of collapse that hit Langtang.
Who pays for the Himalayas
Prime Minister Balendra Shah, the rapper-turned-politician who took office after a wave of youth protests, is due to address the 81st session of the UN General Assembly on 24 September, with climate justice a central theme. Nepal is seeking compensation from the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, the mechanism agreed at UN climate talks to help vulnerable countries recover from climate-driven disasters.
Getting money out of the fund has been slow. Nepal has also waited years for Green Climate Fund approval on earlier projects. Officials argue that a country with a tiny carbon footprint should not have to borrow to rebuild what other nations' emissions helped destroy.