When the Landscape Changes: Rethinking Resilience in Nepal

Before and after: Syafrubesi, Nepal, before and after the August 2026 floods. Satellite imagery shows the dramatic transformation of the river valley and surrounding settlement / Vantor, Open Data Program, CC BY-NC 4.0

By Asmita Dahal

On August 26, 2026, a catastrophic debris flood struck Nepal's Himalayan region after what early assessments indicate was a large ice and rock avalanche associated with glacier collapse. The resulting flood traveled nearly 62 miles (100 kilometers) downstream, causing widespread destruction to communities and infrastructure. Roads, bridges, homes, businesses, schools and entire sections of riverfront settlements were swept away. In places such as Betrawati, Timure and Trishuli Bazaar, only traces of the towns that once stood there remain. Rescue and recovery efforts are still ongoing.

For me, this disaster is difficult to watch from afar. I grew up in Kathmandu, around the Bagmati River corridor, so floods are part of my memory growing up. Like many Nepalese, I learned early that rivers, monsoons, floods, and landslides are not distant or abstract ideas. They are part of the landscape we live with

But what happened on August 26 has made me think about a larger question: What happens when the landscape changes faster than our understanding of it?

Understanding Nepal as a landscape system

Nepal is a country defined by its landscape. Its elevation ranges from roughly 328 feet (100 meters) in the southern Terai to 29,031 feet (8,848 meters) at Mount Everest. The steep transition from the Himalayas through the hills and into the plains creates an intricate network of rivers, valleys, slopes, and watersheds.

These systems have shaped where and how people live. Rivers descending from the mountains support agriculture, settlements, transportation, trade, culture, and increasingly, the country's energy system. Communities have developed around rivers and valleys for generations because these places provide water, fertile land, transportation routes, energy, and connections between communities.

River corridors in Nepal are more than drainage systems. They are cultural landscapes. That relationship makes disasters like the recent flood difficult to understand as simply an infrastructure problem.

Living with hazards is not the same as planning for changing hazards

Flooding and landslides are not new to Nepal. Every monsoon, communities across the country face flooding in the Terai and landslides in the hills and mountains. Nepal has experienced devastating earthquakes, landslides, floods, and other natural hazards throughout its history.

But there is a difference between living with a known hazard and planning for a hazard whose characteristics are changing.

The Himalayan region is undergoing significant changes in its glaciers, snow, and permafrost as temperatures rise. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya are losing ice at an accelerating rate, while changes in glacial lakes are increasing risks associated with glacial lake outburst floods, landslides, debris flows, and other cascading hazards.

The exact chain of events behind the August 26 disaster is still being investigated. But it occurred within this broader and rapidly changing Himalayan environment.

A failure high in the mountains can trigger a cascade of processes downstream, with water, sediment, rock, and debris moving through narrow valleys where communities and infrastructure are concentrated.

Nepal's climate paradox

Nepal contributes very little to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is highly vulnerable to the consequences of a changing climate.

According to the Global Change Data Lab, Nepal accounted for approximately 0.05 percent of global emissions in 2024, with per-capita emissions of about 0.5 tonnes. By comparison, U.S. per-capita emissions were approximately 13.6 tonnes, more than 27 times higher.

These numbers provide context for the imbalance: a country contributing a very small share of global emissions can still face extraordinary exposure to the consequences of a changing climate.

Nepal has also made significant progress in forest conservation. Forest cover has increased substantially since the 1990s, reaching approximately 46 percent of the country's land area. Community forestry has become an important part of Nepal's forest-management system. Hydropower provides the vast majority of Nepal's electricity generation. But these achievements do not make Nepal immune to climate-related hazards. They make the question of resilience more complicated.

Rethinking what resilience means

Resilience cannot simply mean rebuilding every road, bridge, and settlement exactly where it stood before. But neither can resilience always mean telling communities to abandon the landscapes where their families have lived for generations.

A settlement is more than its buildings. It carries history, culture, livelihoods, memories, and a relationship with the surrounding landscape.

When a riverbank settlement disappears, what is lost is not only infrastructure. A piece of that community's history disappears with it. This creates a difficult planning challenge: How do we reduce risk without treating existing communities and cultural landscapes as disposable?

Perhaps the question should shift from How do we protect this site? to How does this entire landscape behave? And where should people and infrastructure fit within it?

Designing at the scale of the watershed

I believe this is where landscape architecture has an important role to play. We need to think beyond individual flood-control projects and sites and begin looking at risk at the scale at which these processes occur: the watershed, the river corridor, the slope, the settlement, and the larger landscape system.

Nepal will need support in integrating hazard mapping and climate projections into land-use planning. We need to identify areas where infrastructure can safely be strengthened, areas where development should be limited, and areas where natural systems can provide additional protection.

The country can also restore forests and riparian systems, protect floodplain functions, improve water retention, and design infrastructure that accounts for sediment, debris, and changing hydrologic conditions.

Nepal can invest in early-warning systems, evacuation routes, community preparedness, and infrastructure designed for the future, not only historical conditions.

These are the landscape decisions needed to protect communities without erasing them.

There is an even more difficult question: How do we protect people without asking them to abandon the landscapes that have shaped their lives?

There will be places where relocation or significant changes in land use are necessary. There will also be places where adaptation, reinforcement, restoration, and better planning can allow communities to remain. The answer will not be the same everywhere.

Different river corridors and settlements need to be understood according to their topography, geology, hydrology, ecological systems, cultural importance, and exposure to risk.

Some landscapes may need to be restored. Some may need to accommodate water. Some may need stronger infrastructure. Some may require a carefully planned retreat. Many will require a combination of these approaches.

Planning for a landscape we cannot predict with certainty

For landscape designers, this represents an important shift in how we understand resilience.

Our work sits at the intersection of natural systems, infrastructure, and human settlement. We are accustomed to thinking about water movement, soils, vegetation, topography, and ecological processes. But as climate conditions change, these systems can no longer be treated as static backgrounds to development.

Nepal does not need to be viewed only as a victim of climate change. It can be viewed as a place where the urgency of climate adaptation is already visible and where the consequences of planning decisions are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

The August 26 disaster is still unfolding. Recovery will take time. But beyond rebuilding what was lost, there is an opportunity to ask what should be built differently, what should be protected, and what should be allowed to change.

For landscape architecture, perhaps the challenge is no longer simply to design resilient places. It is to learn how to design with a landscape that is changing.

Asmita Dahal is a landscape designer at Barge Design Solutions, a multidisciplinary firm based in Nashville, Tennessee.