Nepal glacier flood kills more than 1,400, thousands missing

More than 1,400 people were killed in Nepal when a glacier burst above the Langtang valley on 26 August and sent an ice-rock avalanche and debris flow down the Trishuli river, and the disaster has become the first payout case for the UN fund created to pay poorer countries for climate damage.

The glacier fractured at about 5,200 metres on Mount Langtang Lirung, near the border with Tibet, according to the Revolutionary Communist Group. The Conversation described the flood as tearing through Nepalese and Tibetan townships along the Bhote Koshi river system. Both put the death toll at more than 1,400. They differ on the missing: the Revolutionary Communist Group said 6,170 people were known to be missing, while The Conversation said at least 5,000.

More than 10,000 homes and Nepal's national highway were destroyed, the Revolutionary Communist Group reported.

Nepal's foreign minister, Shishir Khanal, asked the UN's Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage for an emergency payment of $20m, the maximum the fund allows. The fund, agreed at the COP27 summit in Egypt in 2022, set aside $21.6m at its first extraordinary board meeting. The Conversation reported that this is about 0.7% of Nepal's economic losses and does not cover damage to health, culture or nature. The Revolutionary Communist Group put Nepal's reconstruction needs at about $5bn.

The Revolutionary Communist Group, citing AFP's analysis of Copernicus satellite data going back to 1970, reported that average temperatures at 5,200 metres between 21 and 26 August reached 4°C, the highest in 55 years of records. Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth in California, was quoted saying that without the extra heat from climate change such a pattern would occur perhaps once in several thousand years.

Nepal accounts for a small share of global emissions. The Revolutionary Communist Group put it below 0.1% of the world total; The Conversation put it at 0.05%.

The Revolutionary Communist Group, citing a 2023 UN assessment, said Nepal had lost nearly a third of its ice in 30 years. It said the Himalayan region holds 40,000 glaciers, of which 21 are monitored, and that glaciers there melted 65% faster between 2010 and 2019 than in the previous decade. Those glaciers feed rivers used by almost two billion people. In the Indus basin, up to 60% of pre-monsoon irrigation depends on snow and glacier melt, water used by 129 million farmers across the Indus and Ganges basins, the group reported.

The fund has received 176 requests totalling $2.8bn and donors have provided $400m, according to the Revolutionary Communist Group. The Conversation reported almost 180 requests worth $2.8bn by the June 2026 deadline and pledges above $820m. It said Pacific leaders pressed the case at pre-COP31 talks in Fiji, after developed countries agreed in Baku in 2024 to raise $300bn a year by 2035.