Frequent disasters expose climate risks to infrastructure in South Asia

Winnipeg Free Press

2 days ago

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Floods that damaged hydropower dams in Nepal and destroyed the main bridge connecting the country to China show the vulnerability of infrastructure and need for smart rebuilding in a region bearing the brunt of a warming planet, experts say.
The flooding of the Bhotekoshi River on July 8 also killed nine people and damaged an inland container depot that was being built to support increasing trade between the two countries. The 10 damaged hydropower facilities, including three under construction, have a combined capacity that could power 600,000 South Asian homes.
Another smaller flood in the area on July 30 damaged roads and structures, but caused less overall destruction.
Nepal's location in the Himalayan mountains makes it especially vulnerable to heavy rains, floods and landslides because the area is warming up faster than the rest of the world due to human-caused climate change. Climate experts say the increasing frequency of extreme weather has changed the playbook for assessing infrastructure risks while also increasing the need for smart rebuilding plans.
'The statistics of the past no longer apply for the future,' said John Pomeroy, a hydrologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. 'The risk that goes into building a bridge or other infrastructure is generally based on historical observations of past risk, but this is no longer useful because future risk is different and often much higher.'
While damage estimates from the July floods in the Rasuwa region are still being calculated, past construction costs give a sense of the financial toll. The Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge alone, for example, took $68 million to rebuild after it was destroyed by a 2015 earthquake that ravaged Nepal.
The latest disaster has also stoked fears of long-lasting economic damage in a region north of the capital city Kathmandu that spent years rebuilding after the 2015 quake. Nepali government officials estimate that $724 million worth of trade with China is conducted over the bridge each year, and that has come to a standstill.
'Thank God there wasn't much damage to local villages, but the container depot and bridges have been completely destroyed. This has severely affected workers, hotel operators, laborers, and truck drivers who rely on cross-border trade for their livelihoods,' said Kaami Tsering, a local government official, in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
Among those affected is Urken Tamang, a 50-year-old parking attendant at the depot who has been out of work for several weeks. A small tea shop he runs nearby with his family has also suffered.
'We've been unlucky,' said Tamang, a former farmer who sold his land and changed jobs when work on the depot began. He added: 'The whole area was severely damaged by the 2015 earthquake, and just when life was slowly returning to normal, this devastating flood struck.'
Disasters show need for climate-resilient infrastructure
The Nepal floods are the latest in a series of disasters in South Asia during this year's monsoon season. Research has shown that extreme weather has become more frequent in the region including heat waves, heavy rains and melting glaciers.
Climate experts said smart planning and rebuilding in climate-vulnerable regions must include accounting for multiple risks, installing early warning systems, preparing local communities for disasters and, when needed, relocating infrastructure.
'What we have to avoid is the insanity of rebuilding after a natural disaster in the same place where it occurred and where we know it will occur again at even higher probability,' said Pomeroy, the Canadian hydrologist. 'That's a very poor decision. Unfortunately, that's what most countries do.'
Before rebuilding in Rasuwa, Nepal government officials need to assess overall risks, including those due to extreme weather and climate change, said Bipin Dulal, an analyst at Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
The bridge connecting the two countries was rebuilt to better withstand earthquakes after it was destroyed in 2015, but it appears that officials didn't properly account for the risk of flooding as intense as what occurred in early July, Dulal said.
'We have to see what the extreme risk scenarios can be and we should rebuild in a way in which the infrastructure can handle those extremes,' said Dulal.
Dulal said that large building projects in South Asia typically undertake environmental impact assessments that don't adequately factor in the risks of floods and other disasters. The center is developing a multi-hazard risk assessment framework that it hopes will be adopted by planners and builders in the region to better account for the dangers of extreme weather.
Resilient structures can save billions in the long run
In 2024 alone, there were 167 disasters in Asia — including storms, floods, heat waves and earthquakes — which was the most of any continent, according to the Emergency Events Database maintained by the University of Louvain, Belgium. These led to losses of over $32 billion, the researchers found.
'These disasters are all wake-up calls. These risks are real,' said Ramesh Subramaniam, global director of programs and strategy at the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.
A CDRI analysis found that $124 billion worth of Nepal's infrastructure is vulnerable to the impacts of climate-driven disasters, creating the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses if the country doesn't invest in resiliency.
'Investing a relatively smaller figure now would prevent the loss of these enormous sums of damages,' said Subramaniam.
Subramaniam said that most climate investments are directed towards mitigation, such as building clean energy projects and trying to reduce the amount of planet-heating gases being released. But given extreme weather damage already occurring, investing in adapting to global warming is also equally important, he said.
'I think countries are learning and adaptation is becoming a standard feature in their annual planning,' he said.
Global efforts to prepare for and deal with such losses include a climate loss and damage fund set up by the United Nations in 2023. The fund currently has $348 million available, which the U.N. warns is only a fraction of the yearly need for economic damage related to human-caused climate change. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have also provided loans or grants to build climate-resilient projects.
In Nepal's recently flood-ravaged region, Tsering, the local government official, said the repeated disasters have taken more than a financial toll on residents.
'Even though the river has now returned to a normal flow, the fear remains,' he said. 'People will always worry that something like this could happen again.'
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Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India ___
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