Kate Mackenzie, Tim Sahay, and Advait Arun in Polycrisis:
Catastrophe hit the Himalayas last month when ice and rock collapsed in the Langtang National Park. The ensuing debris and floodwaters travelled 100 kilometers down the Lende Khole river, a tributary of the Bhote Koshi, destroying villages, roads, bridges, hydropower facilities, and other critical infrastructure in its path. More than 1,300 people have been confirmed dead and 5,100 are still missing in Nepal; numbers in Tibet are more difficult to ascertain. Scientists are still investigating the precise mechanics of the disaster, but consensus is forming that it was the result of a landslide―perhaps caused by bedrock made unstable by glacial retreat and its attendant meltwater.
Hindu Kush Himalaya glaciers lost 12 percent of their area and 9 percent of their ice between 2000 and 2020, and glaciers and permafrost around the world are being weakened by global heating. The frequency of complex, cascading events in mountain landscapes such as these is only expected to increase in coming years. “Landslides have been occurring as long as the mountains have been building,” Göran Ekström, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Science. But “in areas where glaciers are disappearing, these landslides are occurring more frequently.”
As the rescue mission for the thousands of people still missing continues, Nepal, which is among Asia’s poorest countries, now faces the challenge of recovery and rebuilding. How to pay for that remains an open question.
More here.
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