Getting Ahead of the Storm: Improving Forecasting and Disaster Governance in Nepal

A late-monsoon storm system hit Nepal again this past week, with intense rainfall causing flooding and landslides that took over 50 lives and widespread damage to infrastructure. This was the third time in the last four years that Nepal’s monsoon season ended with a deadly crescendo later than traditionally expected, highlighting increasing climatic volatility in the Himalayan region. While forecasting services and risk communication has continued to improve, government agencies and alerting authorities have struggled to anticipate and respond to these extreme events. For example, the storm that struck Nepal in September 2024 led to more than 200 casualties across the country, unprecedented flooding in Kathmandu, and more than 46.7Bn NPR in estimated damages. In the wake of last year’s storm, many critics pointed out how chronic planning and governance failures, particularly in Kathmandu, exacerbated the disaster. This year’s storm arrived amid a deeply uncertain political transition – just a few weeks after the political crisis that unfolded in the wake of the “Gen-Z Protests” on September 8, which led to the dissolution of Nepal’s parliament and widespread damage to government infrastructure. And yet, despite these governance challenges, Nepal’s alerting authorities and disaster agencies organized a set of disaster risk reduction and crisis management efforts that seem to have been remarkably effective. Public appreciation for forecasting services and the proactive approach taken by disaster managers now seems to be at an all-time high – a remarkable shift. How and why were government actors more effective this time around? This event gathers disaster managers and officials from the Government of Nepal who were at the center of weather forecasting, government coordination, and risk management during the recent storm to discuss the evolving state of the Government of Nepal’s disaster risk managements systems. Panelists will discuss the relative success of recent mobilizations as well as ongoing efforts to improve Nepal’s forecasting capabilities, information infrastructures, and hazard monitoring toolkits. How do Nepal’s decision makers navigate chronic challenges like monsoonal volatility, data sparsity and resource scarcity, and the need to downscale and localize disaster risk plans? What kinds of specific practices of forecasting and risk communication are most effective in such high uncertainty environments? Our objective is to identify patterns of adaptive disaster management that might be useful for disaster managers struggling to navigate climatic volatility and mitigate disaster risk in other settings. This event is made possible with the support of the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies (MACP), and The McConnell Foundation.