Disaster prep must follow geography of risk, not political maps of Himalayas

Dehradun: When Nepal’s Trishuli River surged nearly 30 feet in just 30 minutes after the Rasuwa flash flood, it exposed a stark Himalayan vulnerability: disasters can cross borders faster than warnings. A collapse high in the mountains can trigger a cascade downstream, sending floodwaters, sediment and debris across interconnected river systems with little time for communities to react.

As such hazards become more complex — driven by glaciers, unstable slopes, river blockages and sudden floods — experts said disaster preparedness must follow the geography of risk, not the political maps of the Himalayas.

“The floods in Nepal this week are a reminder that Himalayan rivers don’t recognise the border checkpoints we’ve drawn across them. Water from a glacier burst in Rasuwa reached Bihar’s alert list within a day, while the data and warning systems meant to track it are still largely nationally siloed,” said Anjal Prakash, professor of public policy at FLAME University, Pune, and an author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Pointing to a key institutional gap in the region, Prakash said, “We have irrigation treaties on the Kosi and Gandak rivers dating back to the 1950s, but almost nothing in place for real-time hazard sharing.

“What this region needs isn’t new diplomacy, but for the river commissions and monitoring bodies we already have to be treated as disaster infrastructure, not just water-management infrastructure and resourcing them that way.”

The concern is particularly acute in the Himalayas, where rivers, glaciers and mountain systems disregard national boundaries. A hazard originating in a remote, high-altitude catchment can move through interconnected river systems, threatening communities, infrastructure and hydropower projects far downstream.

Safi Ahsan Rizvi, former IPS officer and ex-adviser with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), said, “The Nepal disaster highlighted a larger gap in the region — the absence of adequately developed cross-border early-warning mechanisms for sudden floods. Political boundaries should not become barriers to disaster preparedness when rivers and hazards themselves cross them.”

Rizvi suggested that India and Nepal establish a joint, 24/7 operational mechanism for vulnerable river basins, which could eventually serve as a regional template.

“The mechanism could link existing disaster-management control rooms in the two countries to ensure that information about sudden events is shared immediately with authorities downstream. Such a mechanism could initially rely on continuous communication between agencies rather than waiting for an elaborate new system or extensive technological infrastructure to be built,” he said.

A senior NDMA official echoed the concern, saying “disaster preparedness must move beyond the administrative boundaries that traditionally shape govt planning.”

“Our discussions on disasters are still largely framed around administrative boundaries, but natural hazards such as floods and flash floods follow river and mountain systems, not political borders. This is why we need to assess risks at the scale of entire mountain and watershed systems and strengthen monitoring across borders,” the official said.

Weather forecasts alone, the official added, cannot capture every trigger behind a cascading mountain disaster.

“We need satellite monitoring of glaciers and unstable slopes, automated weather and rain gauges, river-level sensors and other observation systems,” she said.

But detecting a hazard is only the first part of the problem. The bigger challenge is ensuring that the information reaches vulnerable communities quickly enough for them to act.

“Equally important is a common warning terminology across countries so that a red alert means the same thing on both sides of a border and communities understand when a threat is imminent and when evacuation is necessary,” the official said.

Author: Prof. Anjal Prakash, Faculty of Public Policy