The Pulse | Environment | South Asia

Why South Asia’s Governments Must Build Disaster Institutions That Reflect the Region’s Borderless Hazards

A glacier fell across the China-Nepal border. The flood crossed three countries. But South Asian countries’ responses to natural disasters are limited by borders and politics.

A consignment of medicines, food packets and other supplies being loaded onto an aircraft that India dispatched as part of its humanitarian support to Nepalis impacted by the August 26 floods in Nepal, August 27, 2028.

When part of a glacier collapsed above the Lhende Khola on August 26, the debris flow it triggered was initially mistaken by the U.S. Geological Survey’s automated network for a magnitude-4.4 earthquake. By August 30, the combined toll in Nepal and China’s Tibet had reached around 750 dead, with more than 3,000 missing, including nearly 900 hydropower workers feared trapped.

Nepal’s finance minister estimates rebuilding will cost $4-5 billion, nearly a tenth of the Nepali economy. The collapse occurred on the Nepali side, on Langtang Lirung, which lies wholly within Nepal, but the debris fell into the Lhende Khola-Donglin Tsangpo river system, which crosses the Nepal-China border. The flood surged through Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, while rising downstream levels prompted precautionary evacuations in parts of India. The hazards crossed borders. The mechanisms for responding to them have remained largely national.

South Asia’s problem is not a shortage of frameworks to deal with natural disasters. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, SAARC’s 2005 Dhaka Declaration called for a permanent regional mechanism for disaster preparedness, relief and rehabilitation. A 2006 Comprehensive Framework promised shared early-warning and cross-border data exchange. A Rapid Response mechanism agreed after Pakistan’s 2010 floods entered into force only in 2016, and many provisions have struggled to acquire operational continuity. SAARC’s non-functioning has further hindered a regional response; the grouping has not held a summit since 2014. India, Bangladesh and BIMSTEC have developed bilateral and subregional mechanisms because SAARC has been non-functional for a decade. But even these working instruments remain disconnected.

Disaster cooperation has four parts: monitoring, data-sharing, warning and response. Monitoring tells us what is happening upstream; data-sharing determines who learns about it and how quickly; warning tells downstream governments and populations what to do; response determines whether teams and equipment can cross a border. South Asia has instruments for each, but lacks the chain connecting them.

The 2008 Kosi flood showed the cost of that missing chain. When the eastern Kosi embankment breached at Kushaha in Nepal, some 50,000 Nepalis and millions in Bihar in India were affected. A World Bank assessment recorded 3.3 million affected and nearly 500 deaths. Water scholar Ajaya Dixit identified a core institutional gap: the 1966 Kosi treaty did not establish a clearly defined bilateral operational channel for embankment monitoring and maintenance. That did not cause the breach, but left no fast mechanism to turn warning into downstream evacuation. In 2017, floods across India, Nepal and Bangladesh affected an estimated 41 million people, yet the response remained largely national.

The 2023 South Lhonak glacial lake outburst in Sikkim made the same point. Researchers had estimated a 42 percent probability of the lake bursting. It sent a 20-meter wave through the Teesta-III dam and 385 kilometers into Bangladesh. India’s forecasters alerted Bangladesh the same day, but the lake’s early-warning system was still being installed — a year late. This was initially a failure of domestic preparedness, not a cross-border cooperation failure.

But that domestic lapse does not stand apart from the region’s wider pattern. The weakness exists at every layer, from monitoring to data exchange, warning and response. Foreknowledge is not the missing ingredient.

The response to last week’s glacier collapse and flooding in the Tibet-Nepal region follows a familiar pattern. China’s Premier Li Qiang travelled to the affected Gyirong sector within a day, while India sent relief flights and medical teams within 48 hours. Kathmandu initially declined foreign teams, but later accepted limited foreign expertise for tunnel........

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