Nepal’s development needs are substantial, and the country must continue investing in the infrastructure required to connect communities, expand economic opportunities and improve access to essential services. Roads, bridges, hydropower, transmission lines, tourism infrastructure, settlements and other public facilities are all necessary for Nepal’s economic and social development. But these investments are being made in a country whose physical environment is changing. The question, therefore, is not whether Nepal should continue to develop, but whether the way we plan and build is keeping pace with the changing mountains.
Mountain hazards do not respect the boundaries of individual projects. A road may be designed carefully for the slope on which it stands, yet remain vulnerable to a landslide higher in the same catchment. A bridge may be structurally sound but exposed to changing river behavior, sediment movement or debris coming from upstream. A hydropower project may be designed using historical hydrological information while conditions in the wider mountain environment continue to change. What happens upstream can determine what happens to infrastructure downstream.
This is why the scientific observation of the mountains must eventually influence development planning. Satellite observations, remote sensing, field investigations, weather information, river monitoring and local knowledge can help us understand changing conditions. But information has limited value if it remains in technical reports or research institutions. Its real value comes when it helps a planner decide where to invest, an engineer decide how to design, or a government decide whether a proposed development is appropriate for a particular location.
Nepal is not starting from zero. Government agencies, universities, research institutions and development partners have generated substantial information on geology, hydrology, climate, land use and natural hazards. Nepal has also developed national frameworks for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction and is increasingly using Earth-observation technologies. The challenge is to connect these sources of knowledge more effectively and ensure that scientific evidence reaches the point where public investment decisions are made.
A hazard map alone does not answer every question a planner faces. Should a road alignment be changed? Should a bridge be designed differently? Should a settlement expand in a particular location? Should a hydropower project include additional protection or monitoring? Should an existing structure be reassessed because conditions around it have changed? These questions require scientists, engineers, planners, economists, government officials and local communities to bring different forms of knowledge together.
The timing of risk assessment also matters. It is often treated as something that happens before construction, but major infrastructure can remain in service for decades. During that period, slopes can change, rivers can alter their channels, sediment conditions can vary, glaciers and glacial lakes can evolve, and extreme weather can test assumptions made during design. Risk assessment should therefore not end when construction is completed. Where new evidence indicates changing conditions, important infrastructure should have mechanisms for reassessment and, where necessary, adaptation.
This is particularly important because uncertainty is unavoidable in the Himalaya. Science cannot tell us exactly what every slope, river or glacier will do decades from now. But uncertainty is not a reason to ignore risk. It is a reason to design infrastructure and institutions that can respond as knowledge improves. A resilient investment is not one that assumes every future event can be predicted. It is one that recognizes uncertainty and has the capacity to adapt.
Nepal has become accustomed to mobilizing resources after disasters. Roads are repaired after landslides, bridges are reconstructed after floods and damaged infrastructure is restored after extreme events. Emergency response and reconstruction will always be necessary. But a development system that repeatedly spends public money repairing similar damage should also ask what could have been done differently before the damage occurred. Not every disaster can be anticipated, and hindsight can be unfair. The objective should instead be to improve the quality of decisions made before construction.
We should therefore ask not only, “Can we build this?” but also, “Where should we build it, how should we build it, and what could happen around it during its lifetime?” The objective is not to stop development because risks exist. It is to reduce avoidable exposure and future losses. In some cases, investing more in investigation, design and monitoring before construction may cost less than repeatedly repairing damage afterwards.
The scale at which we plan also needs attention. A road network should not always be considered as a collection of unrelated road sections. A river basin should not be viewed only through individual projects. A mountain valley should not be divided into administrative boundaries when the physical processes affecting it cross those boundaries. Catchment- and landscape-level assessment can reveal risks that may remain invisible when each project is examined separately.
Climate information is also becoming increasingly important for these decisions. Nepal’s complex terrain means that environmental conditions can vary greatly over relatively short distances. Elevation, topography and local weather patterns influence temperature, precipitation, snow and water availability. Better observations, improved data integration and scientifically sound downscaling can provide more useful information at local and mountain scales. But the purpose should not simply be to produce better maps. The purpose is to help answer practical questions about design, location, maintenance and long-term investment.
Public investment is where this knowledge should ultimately converge. If a location has a significant and well-understood hazard, that information should influence project prioritization and design. If new observations indicate that risks are changing, there should be a mechanism to review relevant investments. If climate information suggests that existing design assumptions may no longer be adequate, those assumptions should be reassessed. Risk information should become part of the normal language of planning and budgeting, rather than something consulted only after a disaster.
Provinces and local governments have an important role in this process. They are responsible for significant infrastructure and are closest to the landscapes where risks occur. National institutions can provide climate information, hazard assessments and Earth-observation data, but these need to be translated into information that planners and local governments can use. Local knowledge is equally important. People living in mountain communities often notice changes in rivers, slopes, snow conditions and infrastructure before they appear in formal datasets. Scientific observation and local experience should complement each other.
The goal is not to create another layer of bureaucracy or an institution competing with existing agencies. What Nepal needs is stronger coordination among scientific institutions, government agencies, planners and development partners so that knowledge produced by one part of the system can inform decisions made by another. This also matters for climate adaptation and investment. The more credible our understanding of changing risks, the better we can identify priorities, design appropriate interventions and make a stronger case for investing in resilience.
Nepal cannot stop building because the mountains are risky. Nor can we assume that every future hazard can be predicted. But we can make better decisions with the information available to us, update those decisions as conditions change and design infrastructure that is more capable of dealing with uncertainty. We cannot build for yesterday’s Himalaya and expect tomorrow's infrastructure to remain resilient. Nepal’s challenge is not to choose between development and climate resilience, but to make resilience part of development itself.
The author is a disaster scientist and currently serves as Vice-chair of the Gandaki Province Policy and Planning Commission
