Climate Crisis Drives Internal Displacement in Nepal: Severe Impact of Bhote Koshi and Budhi Gandaki Floods
Climate change has accelerated glacier melting, permafrost thaw, and increased water pressure on rocks in Nepal's Himalayan region. Devastating floods in the Bhote Koshi and Budhi Gandaki rivers have displaced thousands and caused massive damage to hydropower projects, roads, and bridges. An IOM report shows climate-induced internal displacement is setting new global records, with Himalayan countries like Nepal bearing the direct brunt.
Kathmandu. The crisis triggered by complex weather and Himalayan disasters induced by climate change in Nepal—particularly the devastating floods in the Bhote Koshi and Budhi Gandaki rivers—along with the situation of internal displacement, is becoming extremely serious.
Climate change has accelerated processes such as glacier melting, permafrost thaw, and increased water pressure on rocks in the Himalayan region. This has significantly heightened the risk of flash floods, landslides, and glacial lake outburst floods in river basins such as the Bhote Koshi and Budhi Gandaki.
The floods in the Bhote Koshi and Budhi Gandaki have forced thousands of citizens to leave their homes and relocate to safer locations. An IOM report also indicates that climate- and disaster-induced internal displacement is setting new global records, with Himalayan countries like Nepal bearing the direct brunt.
The flood and debris-laden mudflow have caused massive damage to riverside settlements, hydropower projects, motorable roads, suspension bridges, and road networks. This has completely stripped local residents of their livelihoods and created a situation where people are forced to take shelter in temporary camps or elsewhere for extended periods.
Climate change directly and indirectly forces people to abandon their homes. Floods, landslides, flash floods, and cyclones render people homeless in an instant, immediately displacing them internally. Rising temperatures, glacier melting, droughts, declining agricultural production, falling groundwater levels, and the impact of saline water accompanying sea-level rise erode people's livelihood foundations. When conditions become untenable at the local level, people are compelled to migrate internally or externally to safer and more employment-rich areas.
South Asia is one of the regions most at risk from climate change worldwide. According to international organizations and migration reports, millions of people are rendered homeless every year in this region due to floods, torrential rains, droughts, and cyclones. The graph of internal displacement due to weather-related disasters is rising steeply in this region, and millions are being forced to seek refuge in safer terrain due to water crises, riverbank erosion, and inundation.
In Bangladesh, although the impacts of climate change—sea-level rise, cyclones, and salinity—are extremely severe, many affected people appear unwilling or hesitant to leave their ancestral homes immediately. Attachment to ancestral land, social relationships, customs, and community, combined with the need for substantial capital and land to start life from scratch in a new place, means poverty leaves them without the economic capacity to relocate. Coastal residents depend on fishing and agriculture. The fear of not finding work with their existing skills in the city and of enduring a more miserable slum life forces them to stay in their original locations, even at risk.
Nepal's geographical makeup is extremely sensitive and fragile. In the Bhote Koshi, Trishuli, Budhi Gandaki, and their tributary basins, the risk of glacial lake outburst floods, unpredictable extreme rainfall, and continuous landslides in hilly areas is increasing day by day as a result of climate change.
Severe risks of flooding, debris-laden landslides, and riverbank erosion exist particularly in river corridors and lowland areas such as Rasuwa, Betrawati, Dhading, and Nuwakot. If organized settlement development, identification of high-risk areas, and scientific early warning systems are not implemented in time, it is nearly certain that people in these areas will also be displaced and their livelihoods will fall into deep crisis.
Due to environmental destruction and climate-induced disasters, rural residents are increasingly migrating to urban areas or abroad in search of safe housing and employment. As the IOM report points out, local and community-level leadership, risk-sensitive land-use planning, and full implementation of effective early warning systems—along with strict policy enforcement—have become essential to address climate-induced migration and displacement.