Deadly floods sever Nepal-China trade, exposing cost of climate-vulnerable infrastructure
The flood’s destruction of a key bridge and container depot halted an estimated US$724 million worth of annual trade with China
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 US$68 million to rebuild after it was destroyed by a 2015 earthquake that ravaged Nepal.