Nepal knows only too well the devastating dangers of climate change

When Anthony Albanese was asked on Tuesday whether the world shared collective responsibility for the tragedy that befell Nepal last week due to its failure to tackle climate change, he ducked fast.

“Look, I think on Nepal there will be time to examine the science and what has occurred here,” he began. “My thoughts are solely focused at this point in time on the families and on the extraordinarily difficult time that we’re going through,” he said during a press conference in Palau, where he is attending a Pacific Island Forum meeting focused on regional security and climate change .

The Nepali prime minister showed no such hesitation. “The flood in the Bhote Koshi River in Rasuwa was not an ordinary flood,” said Balendra Shah in a social media post late on Monday. “It was one of the region’s major disasters, triggered by an avalanche of snow and ice in the Himalayan region.”

“The people of Nepal are one of the major victims of the changing climate and its impact,” he said, even though they contribute less than 0.01 per cent of the carbon pollution that is causing the warming.

Whatever Albanese might say, the scientific evidence is long-established. It is even long predicted. Nepal’s glaciers have lost almost a third of their volume in the past 30 years due to global warming, the United Nations reported in 2023. “The rooftops of the world are caving in,” said UN chief Antonio Guterres at the time .

In March, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development reported that the Hindu Kush Himalaya glaciers have been losing ice at double the historical rate since 2000 .

Nor are the impacts limited to those villagers who live in the valleys beneath. The region’s glaciers are known as the world’s third pole for the mass of frozen ice and snow they hold frozen on their peaks. Nearly 2 billion people across Asia rely on the annual summer melt from these glaciers to sustain agriculture and generate power.

Dr Neera Shrestha Pradhan, who leads ICIMD’s water program, told this masthead in the hours after the disaster that over the coming 25 years, destabilisation from flood and landslide will increase until in around 2050 the region will hit a period of “peak water”. The shortages will follow from 2050, and are expected to lead not only to immediate human and economic suffering, but political upheaval caused by mass migration.

What is also clear, not just for South Asia, but for the rest of the world, is that the impacts of climate change are already hitting hard. Now entering autumn, Western Europe has just been struck by its fifth heatwave of the season. Over 300,000 people were displaced by fire , crucial river trade has been curtailed, and nuclear power production reduced for the lack of cooling water over summer. Fires are burning more land each year in the Americas, polar sea ice is at historical lows and an intensifying El Nino is expected to drive global temperatures to yet new record highs over the coming 18 months.

Temperature rises will not stabilise until emissions reach net zero, and there is no sign the world is on track to achieving that goal.