Ishika Panta is a first-year master of global affairs student from Nepal who is majoring in governance and policy. She is the founder and chair of Project Abhaya, a youth-led organization advancing political literacy, democratic participation, women's leadership and inclusive governance in Nepal .
For the past few days, my social media has been filled with missing-person posts. A photograph. A name. An age. A phone number. A family asking strangers to share. And then, every once in a while, I see one of those faces again. This time, alive. There is a strange amount of relief in recognizing the face of someone you have never met.
Thank God. You made it.
As of Sept. 2, Nepal’s disaster management authority reported that 1,114 people had died, 3,916 remained missing and nearly 12,000 had been rescued following the Aug. 26 Bhote Koshi flash flood. The numbers continue to change as search and identification efforts continue.
The numbers are difficult to comprehend. But 1,114 is just a number until you see someone’s father in a missing-person post.
Thousands missing is just a number until you see families writing, “Please share. We still haven’t found them.” And a rescue number becomes something completely different when one of the faces you saw yesterday suddenly appears again. Alive.
This disaster has left me with one question that is emotional, but also deeply political: Why is it always vulnerable people who seem to suffer the most?
What happened in Bhote Koshi?
The Red Cross estimates some 93,000 people have been affected. Nepal estimates rebuilding could cost $4 billion to $5 billion.
Satellite analysis indicates that a rapid slope failure associated with a glacier collapse at Langtang Lirung triggered a massive surge of water, ice, rock and debris. The torrent raced downstream through the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river valleys, destroying communities and infrastructure along the way.
The flood tore through settlements and swept away buildings, roads, bridges and power infrastructure. The disaster also created new risks, including unstable terrain and the possibility of further flooding.
The humanitarian impact has already extended far beyond those killed or missing. The Red Cross estimates that about 93,000 people have been affected, while health facilities have been damaged, communities have been isolated and access to safe water, sanitation, health care and shelter has become an immediate concern.
Nepal’s finance minister estimates that rebuilding could cost $4 billion to $5 billion, nearly one-tenth of the country’s economy. Hydropower projects accounting for more than 12% of Nepal’s generating capacity have also been affected.
So when we talk about this as a flood, we need to understand what that word contains.
Lives. Homes. Roads. Electricity. Tourism. Businesses. Farms. Schools. Jobs. Years of savings. And futures that families had spent decades building.
The local response: An outpouring of support
But amid all of this, there is something I do not want us to forget: People showed up.
The government, Nepal Army personnel, Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, health workers, pilots, local officials, emergency responders, volunteers, journalists and ordinary citizens have been working in conditions most of us cannot comprehend from the safety of a screen.
And beyond the formal rescue operation, ordinary people have been doing what Nepalis somehow always do. People are donating 500 rupees because that is what they can afford. Others are raising thousands. Nepalis abroad are collecting money. People are sharing missing-person notices for strangers. Someone is arranging food. Someone is trying to find medicine. Someone is calling hospitals. Someone is searching for somebody else’s child.
I complain about Nepal often with my people. Sometimes I am deeply disappointed by what I see in our society. There are terrible people too. There is selfishness, corruption and cruelty. There are moments when I wonder what has happened to us.
And then something like this happens. And I see the other Nepal.
Someone who does not have much gives to someone who has even less. A stranger shares another stranger’s missing face as though it belongs to their own family. A rescuer walks toward a place everyone else is trying to escape.
That goodness is real too. Maybe that is why this hurts so much. These are my people.
We should acknowledge the state — but also expect more
Gratitude should never require silence. We should acknowledge what is working and still ask how much better prepared we could have been.
The state is present. Search-and-rescue teams, security personnel, provincial and local governments, medical teams and emergency responders are working across the affected districts. That matters.
At a time like this, perhaps more than at any ordinary moment, we are being asked to trust our institutions. People are donating money because they believe it will reach the families who need it. They are trusting the government with something that comes from a very vulnerable place.
I also want to place some faith in the prime minister’s leadership, his integrity and the values he has stood for. I really hope that faith is protected.
Every rupee being donated right now carries someone’s trust with it. Some people are giving from their savings. Some are giving the little they can afford. Nepalis living thousands of miles away are sending money home because doing something, however small, feels better than watching helplessly.
I hope every rupee reaches where it is supposed to go. I hope every decision around relief and reconstruction is made with the seriousness this moment deserves. And I hope the prime minister and the government honor the faith people have placed in them.
I want to be able to look back at this moment and say that when Nepal needed its institutions, they showed up.
But gratitude should never require silence.
We should acknowledge what is working and still ask how much better prepared we could have been. A government rescuing its citizens is not extraordinary. It is its responsibility. Emergency agencies coordinating during a national disaster should be normal. Reaching isolated communities should be expected. Having functioning warning systems should be expected.
We can appreciate the people doing the work while still saying that this is the bare minimum a functioning state owes its citizens.
Whatever capacity Nepal has today needs to grow enormously, because we already know there will be another disaster.
The next flood cannot surprise us simply because we do not know its exact date.
Nepal did little to create the climate crisis
There is another injustice behind all of this.
Nepal is a tiny contributor to the emissions warming the planet. World Bank data show that Nepal emitted approximately 0.5 tons of carbon dioxide per person in 2024. Nepal also had 41.6 percent forest cover in 2023.
Nepal has invested heavily in hydropower and has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2045. Yet the country remains extraordinarily exposed to climate change.
The World Bank warns that climate change is already affecting Nepal’s economy through flooding, heat stress, agricultural losses and other hazards. It also warns that these impacts threaten the country’s gains in poverty reduction and human development.
One World Bank assessment found that the number of people in Nepal affected annually by river flooding could more than double by 2030, while the economic impact could triple. Poor and remote communities are particularly vulnerable.
That is what climate injustice looks like. A country can contribute very little to the problem and still stand near the front of the line when the consequences arrive.
Climate change can make hazards more dangerous. It does not determine how prepared we are when those hazards arrive.
But climate change cannot become our excuse. Nepal cannot blame everything on the rest of the world. Climate change can make hazards more dangerous. It does not determine how prepared we are when those hazards arrive.
That part is also governance.
Where are houses allowed to be built? How resilient are our roads? How are bridges designed? Which communities are mapped as high risk? Who receives warnings? How quickly? What happens when a monitoring station disappears? Does every vulnerable municipality have an evacuation plan? Do local governments have rescue equipment? Are emergency supplies already positioned in high-risk areas? Can communications survive when electricity and roads fail?
These are not questions for after a disaster. They are questions for before one.
And the solutions are not mysterious: stronger early-warning systems, more resilient roads and infrastructure, stronger social protection and disaster-risk planning at every level of government.
Every tier matters. Federal. Provincial. Local. A disaster-management system cannot begin in Kathmandu after somebody calls to say a village has disappeared.
Disasters are never equal
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Why are the people with the least protection so often expected to carry the greatest loss?
A flood does not ask whether someone is rich or poor before entering a house. But what happens afterwards is very different.
Imagine two families losing their homes. One family has savings. Insurance. Another property. Access to credit. Connections. A car. Somewhere else to stay.
The second family had almost everything it owned inside that house. Its livestock. Documents. Harvest. Small shop. Clothes. Savings. Maybe the person who died was also the household’s only income earner.
The flood reached both families. But they did not experience the same disaster.
The World Bank’s research on vulnerability in Nepal shows exactly this problem. Exposure to floods, landslides, drought and heat interacts with poverty and people’s ability to cope.
The poorest often have fewer resources available to protect themselves before a disaster and fewer resources with which to recover afterwards. That is why a disaster can become a poverty trap.
A flood can last an hour. Its economic consequences can last years. A farmer can lose an entire season. A shopkeeper can lose everything purchased with borrowed money. A child can lose months of education. A washed-out road can separate an entire community from markets, hospitals and employment. A family can spend 20 years building something that disappears in twenty minutes.
Why are the people with the least protection so often expected to carry the greatest loss?
Recovery should make people safer
The estimated $4 billion to $5 billion reconstruction cost is enormous for Nepal. But I hope we think carefully about what “reconstruction” means.
Reconstruction cannot mean putting the same vulnerable road back in the same place in exactly the same way. It cannot mean rebuilding communities while ignoring risk maps. It cannot mean restoring electricity without making infrastructure more resilient.
It cannot mean giving a family temporary relief and then leaving them alone to rebuild the rest of their life. If Nepal spends billions rebuilding the vulnerabilities that existed before Aug. 26, we have reconstructed the next disaster, too. Recovery should make people safer than they were before.
I am tired of celebrating our resilience.
After almost every tragedy in Nepal, we say the same thing: Nepalis are resilient.
And we are. We survived the 2015 earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 people, destroyed more than half a million homes and caused losses equivalent to roughly a third of Nepal’s economy.
Then came more floods. More landslides. More earthquakes. More families rebuilding. Again and again, ordinary people somehow begin again. There is something beautiful about that. But I am becoming uncomfortable with how often we need to celebrate it.
I do not want Nepal to become exceptionally good at surviving suffering. I want fewer Nepalis to have to survive it.
I want our security personnel to have the best equipment available before they enter the water. I want municipalities to know exactly where people should evacuate. I want communities to know what warnings mean before their phones begin ringing. I want roads and bridges built for the climate we are entering, rather than the climate we remember. I want social protection capable of reaching a poor family immediately after it loses everything.
And I want international climate finance to reach vulnerable countries before catastrophe, not only sympathy afterwards.
Because climate adaptation is no longer simply environmental policy. It is infrastructure policy, economic policy, poverty policy, federalism, public health, and national security.
Justice has to exist before the disaster too.
When the water recedes: Investing to protect the most vulnerable
I do not want us to simply become more resilient. I want us to become safer.
But eventually the rescue helicopters will stop flying. The international headlines will move somewhere else. The missing-person posts will become less frequent.
And the world will continue. That is the moment I worry about. Because justice cannot arrive only after someone has lost everything.
Climate justice means countries that contributed far more to global warming accepting responsibility for financing adaptation, resilience and loss and damage in countries like Nepal.
But justice within Nepal matters too. It means asking where public money goes. It means demanding better infrastructure. It means strengthening local governments. It means planning settlements around risk. It means protecting poor families before they fall further into poverty. It means treating preparedness with the same urgency that we suddenly discover during rescue.
These are my people.
Maybe I am asking all these questions because I am watching this from somewhere safe. I can put my phone down. Go to work. Eat dinner. Sleep in my bed.
The families in those photographs cannot close the disaster. And I do not really know what to do with that privilege.
So I keep looking. Face after face. Missing. Missing. Missing.
And then occasionally I recognize one. Alive.
Thank God. You made it.
The amount of relief I feel for someone I have never met has reminded me how deeply I consider this country and its people my own.
I can be angry with Nepal and still love it. I can be disappointed by some of our people and still believe deeply in the goodness of so many others. I can thank the government for what is working and still demand far more from it. I can recognize the injustice Nepal faces globally and still ask difficult questions about our own failures at home.
Those things can exist together.
Because the rescuer searching through the mud is my person. The stranger donating 500 rupees is my person. The family waiting beside a phone is my person. And every missing face being shared is somebody’s entire world.
Right now, we rescue. We search. We donate. We mourn. And we hope that another face comes back alive.
But when the water finally recedes, I hope we do not move on too quickly. Because more than 1,100 dead, nearly 4,000 missing, about 93,000 people affected and a possible $4 billion to $5 billion reconstruction bill cannot become just another disaster Nepal survived.
We have to ask what those numbers are trying to tell us. Why do ordinary people continue to carry so much of the risk?
Why do the people who contributed least to the climate crisis live with some of its harshest consequences? Why do people with the least money so often have the least protection?
And if we already know that another disaster will come, what will we do differently before another family has to post another missing face?
I do not want us to simply become more resilient. I want us to become safer.