NEPAL: What if the mud is already here?

By : Claudia Laricchia (Italy), Phurpa Lama (Nepal)

What if the development models humanity embraced after the Industrial Revolution have raised the Earth’s average temperature by 1.55°C?

Not a projection. Not a distant warning. A number already recorded.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2024 was the warmest year ever measured, at approximately 1.55°C above the 1850–1900 pre-industrial average. The past eleven years are the eleven warmest years on record.

What if, in putting profit before prosperity, money before community, greed before wellbeing, and wealth before life, we damage the ecosystems of which we are ourselves a part?

What if we discovered that we are simultaneously the victims and the perpetrators of our own crisis?

What if this warming has also changed the chemistry of the oceans? The oceans have absorbed roughly 30% of the carbon dioxide released by human activities since the Industrial Revolution, contributing to an approximately 26% increase in ocean acidity.

What if the disruption of the climate system is also disrupting the water cycle? What if warmer oceans, altered precipitation patterns, melting glaciers and destabilised mountain environments are contributing to increasingly dangerous combinations of heat, drought, extreme rainfall, floods and landslides?

We do not need to ask what if anymore.

It is already here.

It was in the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2025. It was in the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles in January 2025, when climate change increased the likelihood of the fire-weather conditions. It was in the extreme heat that swept across Europe and the Mediterranean in 2025, with temperatures reaching 46.6°C in Portugal and 46.0°C in Spain.

And now it is in Nepal.

For us in Nepal, climate change is not a distant policy debate; it is an urgent operational reality. Nepal produces virtually zero global emissions, yet our communities, homes and infrastructure suffer the worst damage from glacial floods and landslides. The environmental health of our mountains directly impacts the safety and ecological stability of the whole Asian continent. Poor local construction, mining and deforestation turn natural climate risks into complete disasters. Frontline nations do not need pity or long-term promises; we urgently need early-warning systems, strong infrastructure and fair climate financing.

On 26 August 2026, a catastrophic chain of events unfolded along the Nepal–Tibet border. A massive collapse involving glacier ice and rock triggered an avalanche and debris flow into the Lhende Khola river system. The resulting wall of water, ice, mud and rock travelled downstream, devastating settlements, roads, bridges, hydropower infrastructure and border facilities. The Trishuli River rose by as much as nine metres in just thirty minutes.

The catastrophe along the Lhende and Trishuli river corridor illustrates a severe, immediate reality: frontline mountain communities in Nepal are carrying the human and economic cost of global climate instability. A massive glacial collapse at high altitude triggered a rapid debris surge downstream, destroying vital infrastructure and entire settlements within minutes. I could say it is an unprecedented disaster for our region. One of the most dangerous disasters on Earth.

The immediate cause was not simply “climate emergency”. Scientists are still reconstructing the precise sequence of geological and climatic factors. But there is something we cannot ignore: a rapidly warming Himalaya is becoming a less stable environment.

The Hindu Kush Himalaya is warming and its glaciers are losing ice at an accelerating rate. ICIMOD reported in March 2026 that glacier ice-loss rates across the region have doubled since 2000, with glaciers having lost up to 27 metres of ice thickness since 1975.

Nepal has already lost nearly one-third of its glacier ice over the past three decades.

And the mountains are not isolated. They are water towers for almost two billion people.

The disaster has therefore exposed something larger than the vulnerability of one country. It has exposed the vulnerability of an interconnected system.

As of 28 August, Nepal Police reported 469 deaths from the floods and landslides, while hundreds remained missing; reports indicated around 977 people were still unaccounted for in Nepal. The numbers continue to change as rescue teams reach previously inaccessible areas.

Behind every number is a person, a home, a family, a community, a future interrupted.

And those eyes watching from every corner of the world carry another fear: the fear that what they are witnessing today in Nepal may soon be knocking at their own doors.

That mud is already here.

MAHABAHU MIRROR

Not because every flood, landslide or glacier collapse can be simplistically labelled “climate change”. It cannot. Science demands precision. But climate change is altering the conditions under which these hazards occur, while deforestation, poorly planned urbanisation, infrastructure development, mining, land degradation and inadequate resilience can amplify their consequences.

And this is where the question becomes uncomfortable.

If we have created systems that make ecosystems sick, and those ecosystems sustain us, are we surprised that our own societies become sick with them?

Can we continue measuring success primarily through GDP, production, consumption and financial growth while the very foundations of prosperity – water, soil, biodiversity, climate stability and community resilience — deteriorate?

Or can we change the KPIs?

Can we measure regeneration alongside growth? Resilience alongside productivity? Human wellbeing alongside financial performance? Ecological restoration alongside infrastructure development? Social cohesion alongside economic competitiveness?

Yes, we have alternatives.

Technologies already exist. Circular systems already exist. Regenerative agriculture already exists. Renewable energy already exists. Nature-based solutions already exist. Early-warning systems can save lives. Indigenous and local knowledge can strengthen adaptation. Models of integral ecology can reconnect what conventional development has fragmented: people, planet, economy and culture.

But do we really have an alternative? Yes and no.

Because the alternative is not merely technological. It is cultural, educational, political and organisational. It requires changing what we teach, what we reward, what we finance and what we define as success. Long-term strategies alone are no longer enough if “long term” means waiting decades for transformation while the mud moves in minutes.

The mud runs faster than political decisions.

So the question is no longer whether humanity can afford to change. The question is whether humanity can afford not to.

From Europe to Nepal, the conversation must become one conversation. From SMILY International, from communities working on regeneration and inclusive ecological innovation, to the people living beneath the Himalayas, the message must be shared: resilience cannot be imported after a disaster. It must be co-created before it happens.

Perhaps the most powerful testimony is the simplest. After being rescued from the devastation, Nepali customs agent Omkar Joshi described what he saw in the aftermath:

“It is a giant graveyard.”

MAHABAHU MIRROR

That sentence should not remain in Nepal. It should travel. From Kathmandu to Brussels. From the Himalayas to Milan. From communities on the front line of climate disruption to the institutions still deciding what tomorrow’s economy should look like.

What if is a question of the past. Now we must wonder what will we do now that we know?

Claudia Laricchia, Women Economic Forum Italy – Public Affairs Director; SMILY Academy, President; Global Forum of Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Justice Forum, Head of Strategic International Cooperation; European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability and Rome Business School, Professor; and Correspondent of Mahabahu.

Phurpa Lama, Mentor and Presenter at The Climate Reality Project, from Kathmandu ( Nepal)

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