As Nepal's floods expose the cost of building for a climate that no longer exists, India must rethink how it detects, regulates and prices Himalayan infrastructure risk.
The floods in Nepal should serve as a warning for India. The Indian Himalayan economy — stretching nearly 2,500 kilometres across 13 states and Union Territories, housing almost 50 million people, and supporting critical hydropower, tourism and connectivity infrastructure — is becoming increasingly exposed to a changing climate. The Hindu Kush Himalayan region lost around 12 percent of its glacier area between 1990 and 2020, while the rate of ice loss has doubled since 2000. The consequences are already visible. The 2021 Chamoli disaster killed more than 200 people and damaged two hydropower projects with a combined capacity exceeding 530 MW. Two years later, the South Lhonak GLOF destroyed 13 bridges and the 1,200-MW Teesta-III project, leaving Sikkim with an estimated INR 18,555 crore in damage, more than the state’s annual budget. Without resilience built into development, Himalayan disasters risk becoming recurring crises—costing lives, livelihoods and economic growth.
Climate resilience often enters only after the fundamental choices — where to build, what to build and how much risk to accept — have already been made.
India is expanding its Himalayan infrastructure footprint just as the climatic assumptions underlying that infrastructure are becoming less reliable. Retreating glaciers, expanding glacial lakes, intense rainfall and unstable slopes are interacting in ways that historical records cannot adequately anticipate. Yet roads, bridges, tunnels and power projects expected to operate for the next 50 or 100 years continue to be planned largely on the basis of past weather and hydrological patterns. Climate resilience often enters only after the fundamental choices — where to build, what to build and how much risk to accept — have already been made.
Nepal’s experience must therefore push India to confront a more consequential question: how much of the next Himalayan disaster can be prevented, and how?
That requires three connected shifts: detecting risk, regulating exposure and pricing resilience.
First, India must judge early-warning systems by the time they buy, not the alerts they generate.
India has significantly expanded its ability to identify Himalayan hazards. The Central Water Commission (CWC) monitors 902 glacial lakes and water bodies larger than 10 hectares, while the INR 150-crore National Glacial Lake Outburst Flood Risk Mitigation Programme is strengthening monitoring and early-warning systems across four Himalayan states. However, the 2023 South Lhonak GLOF exposed the gap between identifying a hazard and translating that information into timely action. The lake had been recognised as potentially dangerous years before its outburst, yet no operational warning reached downstream communities before the flood devastated the Teesta valley. Following the disaster, the CWC identified 47 dams potentially exposed to GLOFs; as of 2024, studies had been completed for only 31.
India must build the missing link between forecast and action by institutionalising impact-based forecasting and forecast-based action protocols for high-risk
Therefore, India must build the missing link between forecast and action by institutionalising impact-based forecasting and forecast-based action protocols for high-risk Himalayan catchments. Inundation and downstream impact modelling should establish where a flood will travel, what settlements and critical infrastructure lie in its path, and the likely lead time downstream. These impact maps should be integrated into district and state disaster-management plans and linked to pre-defined warning thresholds and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for road closures, evacuations and protection of critical infrastructure and essential services. High-altitude monitoring systems should have redundant sensors, backup power and multiple communication channels so that the hazard itself does not disable the warning system.
Second, India must price the cost of failure before building infrastructure.
India’s infrastructure appraisal largely captures construction costs, while the wider economic costs of infrastructure failure remain inadequately reflected in project decisions. In the Himalayas, these losses multiply as damaged infrastructure disrupts connectivity, electricity, tourism, supply chains and essential services. The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) estimates India’s annual average infrastructure losses from disasters at nearly US$32 billion, while an additional 10–15 percent investment in resilient infrastructure design can generate economic returns of seven to twelve times through avoided losses.
India should therefore embed climate-risk screening, lifecycle costing and resilience cost-benefit analysis into Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) and public investment appraisal for major Himalayan infrastructure. Projects should account not only for capital expenditure, but for expected lifetime costs, including reconstruction, service downtime and cascading economic losses. CDRI’s existing Resilience Cost-Benefit Analysis provides a ready framework for project appraisal, financing and procurement.
These assessments must be forward-looking rather than historically calibrated. Infrastructure expected to operate until 2070 or 2080 should be stress-tested against projected changes in rainfall intensity, flood discharge, GLOF exposure and slope instability. Resilience must become an upfront investment criterion rather than a reconstruction cost after disaster strikes.
Third, India must stop creating new vulnerabilities in the Himalayas.
Climate-resilient infrastructure is not only about building stronger; sometimes it means deciding where not to build. Uttarakhand received more than six crore tourists and pilgrims in 2025, while Himachal Pradesh received 1.81 crore tourists in 2024. Pilgrimage infrastructure and commercial construction are following this growth, often into narrow valleys and constrained mountain towns where land and evacuation routes are limited. NITI Aayog has itself argued that tourism growth in the Indian Himalayan Region must be governed by local carrying capacity.
India must therefore institutionalise multi-hazard risk zonation within statutory land-use planning and Development Control Regulations (DCRs). District and urban development plans should overlay landslide susceptibility, floodplains, debris-flow channels and potential GLOF inundation zones with settlements, tourism infrastructure, transport corridors and critical services. These maps should determine what can be built and at what intensity: prohibiting new high-occupancy development in very high-risk zones, restricting density in intermediate-risk areas and directing growth towards safer locations. Carrying-capacity assessments should also incorporate evacuation capacity — not simply how many tourists a destination can accommodate, but how many people can be moved safely if a road, bridge or communication network fails.
The choice is not between development and conservation, but between infrastructure planned around historical risks and development designed to withstand the risks of tomorrow.
The institutional architecture partly exists. The National Disaster Management Authority’s (NDMA) landslide-management guidelines provide for hazard zonation and regulation of development in vulnerable areas, while floodplain zoning has long been part of India’s disaster-risk framework. The missing step is to make these assessments legally consequential for master plans, building permissions and infrastructure approvals. A hazard map that identifies vulnerability but does not alter where or how construction occurs is information, not risk reduction.
Continued infrastructure development in the Himalayas will remain important for India’s connectivity, livelihoods and economic development. The Nepal floods, however, underline the need to ensure that new infrastructure accounts for a climate that is changing rapidly. The choice is not between development and conservation, but between infrastructure planned around historical risks and development designed to withstand the risks of tomorrow.
Aparna Roy is a Fellow and Lead, Climate Change and Energy, at the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Aparna Roy is a Fellow with the Climate Change and Energy team at the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at Observer Research Foundation (ORF). Her ...
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