Before flood catastrophe, Nepal asked China for early warnings

Three months before a wall of water, mud and rock killed hundreds when it hurtled down a Himalayan valley bordering Nepal and China, experts and officials from both countries met in Kathmandu to discuss the risk of such disasters.

At the May 27 meeting in Nepal’s capital, 10 officials from Nepal and about a dozen from China, including the Tibet region where the disaster struck, discussed strengthening cooperation to monitor and respond to floods, weather and glacier-related hazards, according to an agenda prepared by the Nepali side and seen by Reuters.

The participants called for joint risk-reduction measures, including inventories of glacial lakes and hazard mapping.

But two Nepali officials told Reuters they did not receive as much information as they wanted from China on glacier risks and water levels after the meeting and they feared insufficient data sharing could hamper their ability to anticipate and prepare for major disasters.

“What we actually wanted from them, and still want, is if there are early movements of glaciers and early movements around that area, we would want to know a bit early,” said Sauhardra Joshi, a hydrologist at Nepal’s Flood Forecasting Division, who was in the May meeting.

CHINA SAYS ITS DATA-SHARING HAS BEEN ‘TIMELY’ No officials or experts have blamed either side for the natural disaster, which will cost an estimated tenth of Nepal’s annual economic output to recover from.

Nepali officials say the priority is to deepen cooperation with China.

China’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the May meeting or on Nepal’s request for additional information sharing.

At the meeting, the Chinese said they did not have the mandate to sign an agreement to meet Nepal’s requests, asking for further discussions, said Binod Parajuli, another Nepal government hydrologist.

Details of the meeting and Nepal’s demands for broader cooperation in monitoring the glaciers that threaten communities on both sides of the border have not previously been reported.

China’s embassy in Nepal said in a statement on X on Saturday that Beijing and Kathmandu had kept in close contact on the issue and had made “substantial progress” at the meeting in May on promoting cross-border disaster information sharing.

Nepal raised similar concerns last year, officials said, though experts and officials cautioned that what they describe as slow progress was not a significant factor in the latest disaster, in which a glacier collapse unleashed a catastrophic mudslide that has killed nearly 800 people in both countries and left more than 3 000 missing, by the latest count.