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Emma White

Alina B.K. should have been preparing for her end-of-year university exams, but news of devastating floods along the Nepal–Tibet border kept pulling her back to a troubling question: what kind of future awaits her?
The 21-year-old forestry student, who coordinates the Pokhara network of Nepalese Youth for Climate Action, said she struggled to concentrate as reports of death and destruction deepened her fears about a changing climate.
“With the floods and deaths happening around us, it is really hard not to feel anxious and emotionally overwhelmed,” she said.
The August 26 disaster, triggered by a glacier collapse, has left more than 1,400 people confirmed dead across Nepal and Tibet, with thousands still missing.
Scientists have not yet established whether the collapse was directly caused by climate change and several factors could have been involved. But experts say the disaster fits a broader pattern across the Himalayas, where rising temperatures accelerate glacier melt, weaken frozen slopes and increase the risk of cascading hazards such as ice-rock avalanches, landslides and flash floods.

Nepal faces these mounting risks despite contributing little to the emissions driving them. A 2022 World Bank report put its share of global greenhouse gas emissions at about 0.1 per cent, while warning that the number of people in Nepal affected each year by river flooding linked to climate change could more than double to 350,000 by 2030, from 157,000 in 2010.
For young Nepali activists like Alina, that means building a future in a country acutely exposed to a crisis it did little to create. The latest catastrophe has deepened anxieties that already shape their studies, family lives and future plans, adding urgency to their demands for climate justice.
A 2024 Unicef report, citing a U-Report poll of 2,506 young respondents in Nepal, said 46 per cent were very or extremely worried about climate change, with another 32 per cent a little worried.

Losses ‘can’t be counted’
Those concerns sit alongside the trauma experienced by survivors. Activists and development specialists say the emotional toll deserves greater attention, even as communities scramble for basic shelter and survival.
Bimal Regmi, a senior consultant for climate change and disaster risk management at Oxford Policy Management Nepal, said losses that were not just economic – from bereavement and psychological distress to the destruction of places of worship and community spaces – were often overlooked.
“People’s [lives] can’t be judged in economic value,” he said. “People’s culture, loss of biodiversity, mental and other stresses can’t be counted in US [dollars].”
For Alina, concerns about the future begin right outside her window in the Annapurna Rural Municipality of Kaski district, where Machhapuchhre – the twin-pointed Himalayan peak also known as Fishtail – dominates the skyline.


She long associated the mountain with snow and light. Recently, however, its appearance has changed dramatically.
“I used to see the white, shining mountains, but Machhapuchhre is becoming like a black rock,” Alina said.
She described hotter summers in a region where fans and air conditioning once seemed unnecessary, as well as erratic rainfall that had disrupted planting and reduced harvests for her family, who rely mainly on agriculture.
Alina said her forestry studies had heightened her awareness of ecosystem threats, making it harder to switch off. She said she often imagined what Nepal might look like in 50 years and where displaced mountain communities would go.
“Nepal is a small country,” she said. “So what will happen if the snow is melted? If the glacier outbursts, what will happen to the people from the mountains? Will the land of Terai [Nepal’s southern lowland belt] be enough for them, for all the shifted people?”
Everyday terror
In flood-ravaged regions, fear can become part of everyday life.
Aakriti Dotel, national network coordinator at Nepalese Youth for Climate Action, saw this first hand while researching disaster-related trauma in Melamchi in 2024.
She found children haunted by a mix of fear for the future and grief for the past. Many told her they were frightened by the sound of the river. Others had lost contact with friends who had moved away, while damaged infrastructure blocked their routes to school and destroyed their play areas.

Khusbu Paudel, a programme coordinator at Ipas Nepal focused on climate change and gender health, said the urgency of saving lives and recovering belongings often sidelined mental healthcare.
“In affected regions, people are more thinking only about how to save [their] life, how to get [their] belongings and everything,” she said. “And the people affected in the disasters … I think the psychosocial thing doesn’t come to priority for people.”
Although government agencies and other organisations were increasingly adding counselling services into disaster-relief health camps, Paudel said support remained inadequate and social stigma could discourage people from seeking help.
Efforts to bridge this gap followed the August disaster. Unicef said on Thursday that it was deploying psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychosocial counsellors alongside government teams to help affected communities.
Monica Neupane, a young climate activist who represented Nepal at the 2022 United Nations climate change conference Cop27 and has given a TEDx talk on climate anxiety, recalled meeting an elderly man during field research who kept a small umbrella beside his bed – ready to flee a sudden flood or landslide.
Neupane spent years trying to understand her own climate anxiety, eventually stepping back from activism to focus on her mental health. When she returned to community work, she realised how widespread the feeling was.
“I actually felt that they are also suffering from climate anxiety, and I was able to help them from my experience,” she said.
Turning anxiety into action
For Alina and Dotel, grass-roots organising offers a way to act on their concerns, although it does not dispel them.
“As youth, we have to make some solution, and we need [to] be an example so that others also can support and others also can cope,” Alina said.
Alongside her work with the youth network, Alina started the Climate Change Advocacy Group Annapurna with other young people in her community. With a small budget, the team delivers environmental education in local schools, organises clean-ups and uses art to show climate impacts.
“If we can obtain and reflect the climate change impact in a story or in a form of art, it … remains in [the] mind for a long time,” she said.
Dotel also introduces climate anxiety into her school presentations once pupils are old enough, connecting lessons about climate change with ways to take action.

Working with fellow organisers helps her feel less alone, though each new disaster tests her resolve.
“Again and again we are facing this kind of crisis and it demotivates us,” Dotel said.
While Alina believes local knowledge and education are vital for communities to prepare for future hazards, she said vulnerable people also needed support that goes beyond what young volunteers could provide.
“What vulnerable countries need is not simply sympathy or conventional development finance,” Alina said. “We need climate justice, including timely and adequate loss and damage finance and compensation for the losses and damages we are experiencing.”


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Houses buried in mud after flash floods in Nepal’s Nuwakot district in August. The August 26 tsunami-like surge of water, mud and debris from a glacial mountain collapse on the China-Nepal border has left more than 5,650 missing. Photo: AFP

A flooded home following the deadly flash floods and mudslides in Bagmati province, Nepal, in September. Photo: Reuters

Alina B.K. is a climate activist and one of the many young people in Nepal who are worried about the impact climate change will have on the future of their country. Photo: Alina B.K.

Children displaced by the deadly flash floods and mudslide stand in a queue to receive free clothes at a school turned into a temporary shelter in Nuwakot district, Nepal, in September. Photo: Reuters

A school bag lies amid debris and mud outside a damaged house following the flash floods and mudslide in Nuwakot district, Nepal, in August. Photo: Reuters

Children displaced by recent flash floods sit inside a temporary shelter set up at a school in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, in September. Photo: AP

A drone view of the aftermath of flash flooding along the Trishuli river amidst fresh water surge warning in the Trishuli Bazaar area of Nuwakot district, Nepal, in August. Photo: AP

Nepal’s flood survivors face economic ruin as migration beckons

The trail of destruction left by the August 26 flood in Dhunge Bazaar, Nuwakot, Nepal. Photo: Bibek Bhandari 

A man looks at photos of missing people outside an army camp in Bidur, Nuwakot, Nepal. Photo: Bibek Bhandari 

Children play a board game in a dedicated child-safe space at a shelter in Nuwakot, Nepal. Photo: Bibek Bhandari 

The trail of destruction left by the August 26 flood in Dhunge Bazaar, Nuwakot, Nepal. Photo: Bibek Bhandari  

Nepal’s US$2.5 billion flood bill puts UN climate fund to its biggest test yet

People stand next to damaged houses following the deadly flash floods and mudslides, in Betrawati, Nuwakot district, Nepal, on Sunday. Photo: Reuters

An army team departs for a flooded area to carry out rescue operations in the aftermath of flash floods in Trishuli, Nepal’s Nuwakot district on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Nepal police search for survivors and victims of the deadly flash floods and a mudslide, in Betrawati, Nuwakot district, Nepal, on Sunday. Photo: Reuters

After Nepal-Tibet floods, recovery depends on grass-roots solidarity

Soldiers shovel mud away from a school that was swamped by the flood in Baireni Bazar, Nepal. Photo: EPA

Relatives grieve during a prayer meet held for missing flash flood victims inside a monastery at Trishuli Bazar in Nepal on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Rajendra Dawadi, a school teacher of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, helped evacuate hundreds of students ahead of the floods. Photo: AP

Donated food is piled up at a monastery where people sought refuge in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Monday. Photo: AP

Workers install a zip line across Trishuli river in the aftermath of flash floods at Bidur in Nepal’s Nuwakot district on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

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An army helicopter transports rescuers and flood victims in Nepal’s Rasuwa district on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

An army helicopter carries out search and rescue operations in Nepal’s Rasuwa district on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

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After August’s glacier collapse killed more than 1,400 people, young Nepalis are demanding justice, not just sympathy


After August’s glacier collapse killed more than 1,400 people, young Nepalis are demanding justice, not just sympathy.


2026 China-Nepal flash floods

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Tibet

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Young Nepalis battle climate dread in wake of flood disaster

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}After August’s glacier collapse killed more than 1,400 people, young Nepalis are demanding justice, not just sympathy

After August’s glacier collapse killed more than 1,400 people, young Nepalis are demanding justice, not just sympathy