Photo: Collected
Housing construction in high-risk zones in northern Nepal, several areas of south-eastern Tibet and part of India’s Uttarakhand rose by nearly 45 per cent between 2016 and 2023. A new study says at least 3 lakh people are living in the Himalayan region with the risk of potential natural disasters hanging over them.
The paper, published in the journal Scientific Reports, says construction grew even faster in areas at risk of flooding from glacial lakes. Over the same period, the built-up area there increased by nearly 78 per cent.
According to the researchers, the actual number of people at risk could be much higher. This is because they worked on a specific geographical region; surrounding areas facing similar risks were not included in the analysis.
The study was carried out before Nepal’s devastating floods last August. More than 1,400 people died and thousands went missing in those floods. Several smaller disasters have hit the country since then. For example, on 11 October, floods along the banks of the Budhi Gandaki river damaged 200 houses, washed away five bridges and left five people missing.
Nine researchers from the United Kingdom, Nepal and India examined areas up to 50 kilometres downstream along Himalayan rivers and the surroundings of about 1,360 glacial lakes. In these areas, they found construction spreading at a significant rate, including tourism-related facilities, infrastructure and housing.
The change is most visible in Pokhara, one of Nepal’s main tourist hubs in the Himalayan foothills. The city has expanded massively over the past 30 years to meet the demand of huge numbers of tourists.
Pokhara Mayor Dhana Raj Acharya said managing the risk of the Seti Gandaki river, which comes down from the Annapurna range and flows through the city, is a big challenge. According to him, many old buildings stand just 5 metres from the riverbank. Although new rules require buildings to be built farther from the river, changing the situation in practice has become difficult.
The mayor said, ‘The real challenge is where and how the buildings will be moved.’
North of Pokhara, in the world-famous Annapurna trekking region, settlements along riverbanks have also grown a great deal. Some of them have been damaged in recent floods and landslides.
Phurpa Chhiring Lama, who runs a homestay there, feels helpless about the situation. At this time of year, the peak trekking season, all 20 of his rooms are usually full of tourists. Now only five have been booked.
Lama said, ‘We have been running this business for more than 40 years, but we have never seen disasters like this.’
Krishna Gauchan, who runs a hotel near the Modi river, which is fed by glacial water, is also worried. In his words, ‘If a glacier collapses or a glacial lake bursts and water rushes out, this river could flood. We always live in fear.’
According to Khagendra Poudel, a geographer at a local campus of Tribhuvan University, tourism investors are promoting some places as tourist destinations without considering the potential dangers. The same is happening in some parts of the Himalayan valleys of northern India, which are home to important religious pilgrimage sites.
The president of the Pokhara Hotel Association also admitted that the tourism business in the region has grown ‘without proper planning’. Tourist destinations have also been promoted ‘haphazardly’.
Laxman Subedi said, ‘Nothing can be done once a disaster strikes. As a professional organisation, we are trying to raise awareness among tourism entrepreneurs and investors.’
However, it is not only the tourism sector that is at risk. Construction of hydropower plants around the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers has also increased significantly.
The study’s lead author, C Scott Watson, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds, warned, ‘As settlement in river valleys grows, the decisions being made about development today will shape the pattern of disaster risk for decades to come.’
The number of buildings actually in danger could be even higher than those the researchers classed as at risk. The study classed buildings within 50 metres vertically of the water surface of a river or glacial lake as at risk. Yet during the devastating flood of 26 August, residents of Nepal’s Rasuwa district said the river water rose by as much as 70 metres in places. As a result, buildings relatively far from the banks were also damaged by the flood and buried under debris and mud.
One of the main reasons for the rising disaster risk in these areas is the increase in temperature in the Himalayan region. Scientists say warming there is happening at twice the global average rate. This is causing glaciers, vast ice sheets, snowpacks and permafrost to melt rapidly.
As a result, mountain slopes can become unstable. Earthquakes are also frequent in these areas. This can lead to landslides and various other disasters, whose destructive impact falls on settlements downstream.
Glacial lakes are growing as water from rapidly melting glaciers accumulates. If the dams of these lakes burst at some point, deadly floods can occur. Nearly 30 such events have been documented in Nepal since 1940.
Another consequence of rising temperatures is that it now also rains at altitudes where previously only snow fell. This is increasing the risk of disasters such as slope collapses and rock and ice avalanches.
In a recent address to the UN General Assembly, Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah highlighted the dangers of climate change. He said the country is having to pay a ‘huge price’ for a crisis for which Nepal is not responsible.
Shah said, ‘Every major disaster threatens to wipe out years of development gains. And it forces a poor country to borrow to repair damage for which it is not responsible.’
Alton Byers, a mountain geographer at the University of Colorado in the United States, who was not involved in the study, said the research could serve as ‘a starting point’ for more effective early warning systems and other preventive measures.
However, implementing that will not be easy. Activists working on the environment and disasters allege that building regulations are not properly enforced on the ground. Unplanned development has been going on in many areas year after year.
According to Professor Surya Raj Acharya, an urban planning expert and registrar of Nepal University, roads, hydropower projects, hotels and market towns have spread rapidly on low-lying, flat land along riverbanks. This land is easy to reach and relatively convenient to build on. He said those involved in development have often ignored important safety rules such as staying away from riverbanks.
In Acharya’s words, ‘Fragile ecosystems like the Himalayas need stricter planning and building rules than other places. Yet these rules are weak and not properly enforced.’
Nepalese authorities say they are working to address the problems. According to the country’s national disaster management authority, living and construction will soon be banned in settlements within 15 metres of the Rasuwa-Bhotekoshi river corridor, which was hit by the recent devastating floods. Steps are also being taken to introduce similar rules in other river valleys.
The authority’s chief executive, Dharma Raj Upreti, said, ‘This is a difficult task, because in many places people have an emotional attachment to their land and property. But we cannot ignore the growing risk.’
A similar picture has been seen across Nepal’s western border in India’s Uttarakhand state. Activist Anoop Nautiyal alleged that rules limiting tourist numbers and environmental regulations have been bypassed there in the name of economic growth.
Nautiyal said that on paper there are land-use rules banning the construction of houses and infrastructure very close to riverbanks, but in practice they are not enforced. In his words, ‘You will see construction going on extensively everywhere.’
On 12 October, the Uttarakhand government approved new rules to regulate land use and development on flood-prone plains. The state cabinet decision said, ‘The aim is to protect life, property and critical infrastructure from potential flood damage while maintaining the natural flow of floodwater.’
Basanta Raj Adhikari, director of the disaster research centre at Tribhuvan University, however, believes these threats cannot be eliminated entirely.
Another way to reduce risk could be insurance classification. According to Adhikari, if the authorities mark areas as high, medium and low risk, insurance benefits could be set accordingly. That would give people who build houses in relatively safe areas the chance to get better insurance cover.
For now, however, there is no sign of construction slowing across the Himalayan region.
Background
According to an AFP report of 30 August 2026, at least 781 deaths and 2,502 missing people had been reported in Nepal by then from flash floods on the Trishuli river; the worst-hit district was Rasuwa. These figures differ from those in the original report, as data vary between sources.
By the numbers
According to a Nature Asia press release of 9 October 2026, the study analysed areas 50 kilometres downstream of 1,361 Himalayan lakes and estimated that about 2 lakh 93 thousand 800 people could be at risk of flooding in 2026, which is 18 per cent of the total population of those areas; of them, about 1 lakh 8 thousand 500 are in Nepal.
At a glance
According to an Earth.Org report of October 2020, a flood downstream caused by the sudden bursting of a lake formed by glacial meltwater is called a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). A survey by ICIMOD and UNDP at the time identified 3,624 glacial lakes in Nepal’s Koshi, Gandaki and Karnali basins, of which 47 were said to need urgent risk-reduction measures.
Sources
Background sources: Nature Asia, 9 October 2026; AFP (Citizen Digital), 30 August 2026; Earth.Org, 27 October 2020
