By TON Nepal

In comparable with the progress, natural vulnerabilities are becoming more devastating and unpredictable. The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on October 13 this year has spotlighted early cautionary and action on multi-hazards a very relevant theme in Nepal’s disaster risk landscape. With hydro-meteorological menaces growing in occurrence and its amount across the country, Nepal early warning systems have also been developing to keep pace.
Nepal has come a long way from the early 2000s to observe and monitor water levels in rivers and warn communities about the probability of inundations through warnings. Today, Nepal has water-level sensors and data acquisition units that deliver real-time information about the flow of rivers.
Nepal is observing significant progress in the generation, correctness, and appropriateness of primary warnings through progressive tools, finer-resolution models, and Earth observation. These advancements in technology are being complemented by a partnership with communities, government agencies, and local and regional organizations working on disaster risk decrease.
Today, organizations such as the UNDP, Practical Action, Mercy Corps, Lutheran World Relief, and ICIMOD, in association with the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), have made flood early warning systems across Nepal. Since 2016, the DHM has provided weather and climate facilities with flood advisories and statistics on rainfall guesses, weather forecasts, and apprises on the situation of important rivers.
The department connects these advisories through flood bulletins and SMS alerts to targeted receivers, which include vital groups involved in disaster risk reduction, including the National Emergency Operating Centre and individuals within the identified hazard zones.
These early warning systems have proven effective on numerous incidents, such as during the 2014 flooding in the Karnali River, the 2017 flooding in the Ratu River, and the 2021 Melamchi floods. Local radio and familiar communication were used for messaging.
Moreover, the World Food Programme and the Government of Nepal are implementing a forecast-based financing project to bridge the gap between early warnings and anticipatory actions for floods in the 14 most disaster-prone districts of the Terai region. Similarly, the government of Nepal is working on institutionalizing early warning systems across government levels. As a participant to the Sendai Framework for DRR, Nepal has made significant progress in policy concerning disaster risk reduction, setting up institutional structures, plans, and guidelines at national, sub-national, and local levels.
However, in parallel with progress in early warning systems, threats are becoming more devastating and unpredictable. Annual monsoons and untimely, difficult-to-predict hazard events still wreak havoc on our communities. Floods, flash floods, and landslides have plagued Nepal’s Terai and mid-hills in recent years.
For example, the untimely floods of October 2021 in far western Nepal, the floods in Melamchi in June 2021, and the 2017 monsoon floods across South Asia. According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA), hydro- meteorological disasters, including floods and landslides, have already led to at least 143 deaths across the country in 2022.
To multiple matters, indices of climate extremes related to temperature and precipitation propose that these extremes will continue to intensify, snowballing volatility in the future. Nepal’s Climate Change Scenario specifies that extreme precipitation events are probable to increase in frequency, with highly wet days (P99) anticipated to increase.
The IPCC AR6 report warns that the vicissitudes to stream flow magnitude, timing, and associated extremes are predictable to unfavorably impact freshwater ecosystems, biodiversity, agriculture, health, energy, and infrastructure within the mid-to-long-term timeframe across all evaluated climate circumstances.
There is also the increasing threat of surging multiple hazards. Disaster events show that floods in the mountainous region have changed in recent years. Manifold climate hazards coincide, and numerous climatic and non-climatic risks interact, complicating the overall risk and cascading risks and impacts on lives, livelihoods, ecosystems, agricultural productivity, and infrastructure. The Melamchi disaster is an exceptional example of cascading hazards, with glacial lake upsurge floods, landslides, and landslide dam outburst floods snowballing to cause colossal damage.
The next stage in the evolution of early warning systems in Nepal is focusing on multi-hazard early warning and information identifying at-risk areas, to improve response efficiency. We must strengthen local and national policy frameworks to support multi-hazard early warning systems. The government has a Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Strategic Action Plan in place, which prioritizes multi-hazard risk assessment and mapping at different governance levels. The NDRRMA also leads a task force to develop a multi-hazard early warning systems framework.
However, these strategies and plans need to be implemented on the ground, which is achieved with a wider partnership and a greater decentralization of disaster management roles and responsibilities to local governments as has been seen in Karnali, where the provincial government is preparing a strategic action plan to run a multi-hazard early warning system, or in Saptari, where stakeholders have come together to create a basket fund.
Significantly, at a trans-boundary level, we do not have a formal mechanism for early warning between disaster risk authorities across borders. Trans-boundary disaster events—such as the 2016 glacial lake outburst flood in the Bhote Koshi and the 2008 floods in the Koshi are some examples where trans-boundary collaboration in EWS would have minimized the impacts.
There are also opportunities to strengthen community engagement and ownership, risk communication, and response mechanisms. According to ICIMOD shows that action needs to occur locally with impact-based early warning. Early warning information must reach individuals and households through formal and informal risk communication and institutional mechanisms.
Nepal also need concerted efforts to help communities understand the implications of the warning and be trained to take appropriate action, identify safe evacuation routes, and establish safe zones in advance. Similarly, given how disasters compound inequalities and existing vulnerabilities, a tailored gender perspective must be adopted in planning and adaptation to disaster risks. Nepal also need to develop and instil a culture of better preparedness at the local level so communities can take timely action.
This year in March, UN Secretary-General declared that the World Meteorological Organization would focus on ensuring every person is protected by early warning systems within five years. This provides Nepal with an opportunity to scale up and seek investments in early warning systems to meet the global target of the Sendai Framework in a bid to substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to people in near future.
Nepal need to put in place end-to-end and people-centered multi-hazard early warning systems supported by investments and policy agendas. This would help us better understand risk and improve monitoring and warning for not only floods but also for a host of other, possibly interconnected, hazards. At the local level, we must strengthen risk communication, awareness, and response capabilities with adequate budgets, technical expertise, and human resources. Nepal must nurture improvement to diminish the opposing effects of disasters and react to manifold surging hazards in Nepal all leading towards a more maintainable, robust, and impartial future.