KATHMANDU, Nepal — Floods that damaged hydropower dams in Nepal and destroyed the main bridge connecting the country to China show the vulnerability of infrastructure and the need for smart reconstruction in a region bearing the brunt of climate change, experts say.

On July 8, Bhotekoshi River floodwaters killed nine people and damaged an inland container depot that was being built to support increasing trade between the two countries. The 10 damaged hydropower facilities, including three under construction, combined have capacity to power 600,000 homes.

Another smaller flood in the area on July 30 damaged roads and structures but caused less overall destruction. Elsewhere in the Himalayas, flash floods swept away roads, homes and hotels in northern India on Tuesday, killing at least four people and leaving many others trapped under debris, officials said.

The Himalayan region, which crosses Nepal and several nearby countries including India, is especially vulnerable to heavy rains, floods and landslides because the area is warming faster than the rest of the world due to human-caused climate change. Climate experts say the increasing frequency of extreme weather has changed the playbook for assessing infrastructure risks while also increasing the need for smart rebuilding plans.

“The statistics of the past no longer apply for the future,” said John Pomeroy, a hydrologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “The risk that goes into building a bridge or other infrastructure is generally based on historical observations of past risk, but this is no longer useful because future risk is different and often much higher.”

While damage estimates from the July floods in the Rasuwa region are still being calculated, past construction costs give a sense of the financial toll. The Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge, for example, cost $68 million to rebuild after it was destroyed by a 2015 earthquake that ravaged Nepal.

The latest disaster has also stoked fears of long-lasting economic damage in a region north of the capital city, Kathmandu, where reconstruction took place for years after the 2015 quake. Nepali government officials estimate that $724 million worth of annual trade with China took place over the bridge, and that has come to a standstill.

“Thank God there wasn’t much damage to local villages, but the container depot and bridges have been completely destroyed,” said Kaami Tsering, a local government official, in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “This has severely affected workers, hotel operators, laborers, and truck drivers who rely on cross-border trade for their livelihoods.”

Among those affected is Urken Tamang, a 50-year-old parking attendant at the depot who has been out of work for several weeks. A small tea shop he runs nearby with his family has also suffered.

“We’ve been unlucky,” said Tamang, a former farmer who sold his land and changed jobs when work on the depot began. “The whole area was severely damaged by the 2015 earthquake, and just when life was slowly returning to normal, this devastating flood struck.”

The Nepal floods are the latest in a series of disasters in South Asia during this year’s monsoon season. Research has shown that extreme weather in the region has contributed to more heat waves, heavy rains and melting glaciers.

Climate experts said smart planning and rebuilding in climate-vulnerable regions must include accounting for multiple risks. This includes installing early warning systems, preparing local communities for disasters and, when needed, relocating infrastructure.

“What we have to avoid is the insanity of rebuilding after a natural disaster in the same place where it occurred and where we know it will occur again at even higher probability,” said Pomeroy, the Canadian hydrologist. “That’s a very poor decision. Unfortunately, that’s what most countries do.”

Before rebuilding in Rasuwa, Nepal government officials need to assess overall risks, including those due to extreme weather and climate change, said Bipin Dulal, an analyst at Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

The bridge connecting the two countries was rebuilt to better withstand earthquakes after the one in 2015, but it appears that officials didn’t properly account for the risk of flooding as intense as what occurred in early July, Dulal said.

“We have to see what the extreme risk scenarios can be and we should rebuild in a way in which the infrastructure can handle those extremes,” Dulal said.

Large building projects in South Asia typically receive environmental impact assessments that don’t adequately factor in the risks of floods and other disasters, Dulal said. The center is developing a multi-hazard risk assessment framework that it hopes will be adopted by planners and builders in the region to better account for the dangers of extreme weather.

In 2024 alone, Asia experienced 167 disasters — including storms, floods, heat waves and earthquakes. That was the most of any continent, according to the Emergency 91��Ƶ Database maintained by the University of Louvain, Belgium. These led to losses exceeding $32 billion, the researchers found.

“These disasters are all wake-up calls,” said Ramesh Subramaniam, global director of programs and strategy at the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. “These risks are real.”

A CDRI analysis found that $124 billion worth of Nepal’s infrastructure is vulnerable to the impacts of climate-driven disasters, creating the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses if the country doesn’t invest in resiliency.

“Investing a relatively smaller figure now would prevent the loss of these enormous sums of damages,” Subramaniam said.

Most climate investments are directed to mitigation, such as building clean energy projects and trying to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being released, Subramaniam said. But given extreme weather damage already occurring, adaptation to climate change is equally important, he said.

“I think countries are learning and adaptation is becoming a standard feature in their annual planning,” he said.

Global efforts to prepare for such losses and recovery include a climate loss and damage fund set up by the United Nations in 2023. Currently, the fund has $348 million, which the U.N. warns is only a fraction of the annual economic damage related to human-caused climate change. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have also provided loans or grants to build climate-resilient projects.

In Nepal’s recently flood-ravaged region, Tsering, the local government official, said the repeated disasters have exacted more than a financial toll on residents.

“Even though the river has now returned to a normal flow, the fear remains,” he said. “People will always worry that something like this could happen again.”

Editor’s note: Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India

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