THE MASS OF WATER surging across the phone screen looks like a special effect. A terrifying and strange sight. Perhaps that is precisely why so many people in the Rasuwa and Nuwakot regions of Nepal froze in their tracks, staring at the raging torrent, with no time left to flee.

On the morning of 26 August, no one could have anticipated the kind of disaster that would befall thousands of people on an ordinary Wednesday. Not even though the same area – the valleys of the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers – had been flooded only the previous year, when the monsoon rains were unusually heavy.

Everything happened exactly as climate researchers had warned. Climate change brings with it extreme weather and other uncontrollable events. Scientists have long been aware of just how dangerous this phenomenon is and have been doing their utmost over the last two decades to raise awareness amongst decision-makers. The message is clear: this is a crisis caused by human activity, which must be rectified now, before the entire system collapses with unpredictable consequences.

Climate change is being exploited for political gain

Despite the arguments and warnings from leading researchers in the field, climate change has become a political bone of contention. The years following the coronavirus pandemic, in particular, have shown just how easily the political climate can shift, whilst the actual climate continues to sound ever more alarm bells around the world.

The Paris Agreement set a target of limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees.

All that remains of that agreement is a fond memory. At present, the Earth is warming rapidly. In October 2026, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reported that exceeding the 1.5-degree threshold is already inevitable. Irreversible changes are already taking place.

As the permafrost thaws, more carbon is released into the atmosphere, coral reefs are being destroyed and the Arctic region is changing. For example, the Himalayan region has been found to be warming at up to twice the rate seen previously during the 2000s. According to a 2023 UN assessment, the mountains have lost nearly a third of their ice mass over the past 30 years.

The climate crisis is putting an end to traditional livelihoods

Extreme weather events are already a reality. At the start of the decade, Somalia and Kenya in particular suffered the worst drought in four decades. The annual cycle in the region is normally divided into dry and wet seasons. In the early 2020s, the rains failed to materialise for two years. The drought made farming impossible and killed livestock. East Africa has teetered on the brink of famine many times in recent years, and hundreds of thousands of people died of starvation in the region in the 2000s. 

Whilst part of the world’s population is suffering in the grip of drought, others are battling floods. In South Sudan, above-average rainfall in 2019 caused the al-Sudd wetland to flood. The flooding continues, which has meant the loss of livestock and everything else for the people in the area.

Last year was one of the warmest on record

Floods and storms on the continents of Africa and Asia may seem distant from a European perspective, but the climate crisis is also already here.

In recent summers, the news has reported on extreme heatwaves and violent storms across Europe. Heatwaves of 40 degrees have caused at least 35,000 excess deaths this summer.

According to the Finnish Meteorological Institute, last year was also the second warmest on record in Finland. Taking into account the long-term average for the years 1991–2020, the average temperature across the country was 1.6 degrees warmer than usual, at 4.5 degrees. Only the year 2020 has been warmer.

For the time being, many of us can still buy fans and cooling air-source heat pumps, but we should be concerned about the state of our unique Arctic environment and whether children and adults will still be able to enjoy snowy winters in the near future.  

A warming climate causes excess deaths

It is high time we started calling climate change a climate crisis. It is already here, and it is not going away.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the warming climate will cause 250,000 additional deaths each year over the next two decades. These deaths will be caused by malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoeal diseases and heatstroke. By 2030, climate change is also estimated to increase global healthcare costs by 2–4 billion US dollars a year. The countries already among the world’s poorest are struggling the most to cope with the situation.

They are also set to be hit hardest by the El Niño phenomenon, which is predicted to be exceptionally strong. The UN warned of its dangers at the beginning of September. El Niño further intensifies weather phenomena that have already become more unpredictable. It also offers a foretaste of the temperatures likely to prevail towards the end of the next decade.

The strength of El Niño, which originates in the Pacific Ocean, is measured by changes in the surface water temperature of the region. We speak of El Niño when the temperature is half a degree above the long-term average. If the difference is more than two degrees, it is classified as a super-El Niño. The difference is now already nearly three degrees, and the situation is unprecedented.

The climate crisis is forcing people to become refugees

The climate crisis is forcing people across the world to leave their home regions as they become uninhabitable. It gives rise to conflicts when the inhabitants of regions receiving large numbers of climate refugees are forced to compete with the new arrivals for resources that may be becoming increasingly scarce.

According to the 2023 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as many as 3.5 billion people already live in areas vulnerable to climate change. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), for its part, has reported that the number of people forced to move as a result of climate change has doubled over the past half-century. As many as 70,000 people are forced to move within their own country every day due to climate change.

The human rights organization Amnesty International states that by 2050, more than 200 million people will be forced to leave their homes due to the effects of climate change. The effects will be felt particularly in the world’s most densely populated areas, and the vast majority of climate-induced migration will take place within national borders. As the climate crisis progresses, cross-border migration will also increase.

Floods in Nepal caused widespread destruction

Who are the people most likely to have to contend with the effects of the climate crisis and even to leave their home regions as they become uninhabitable?

Most of them live in countries that contribute the least to the acceleration of climate change. They live, for example, in Nepal at the foot of the Himalayas.

When disaster struck in August, it affected the lives of over 84,000 people within minutes. More than 5,000 people are still missing in the wake of the floods, and over 1,400 have been reported dead. Life in the river valleys has been devastated in a very fundamental way. The flash floods swept away homes, schools, roads, electricity and livestock. The devastation also affected tourism, a vital source of livelihood for the region. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has assessed that the flash floods have also posed a serious threat to employment in the region.

Tourists will not be returning any time soon, jobs along the riverbank have been washed away, and the slow process of clearing up after the floods is preventing people from travelling from the area to workplaces

Extreme weather events are a warning of what the future holds

As climate scientist Bill McGuire wrote in The Guardian in September: “Global warming leaves no region on Earth untouched. Whilst the world is still reeling from the horrific events in Nepal and Tibet, this is a warning that we are ignoring at our own peril.”

Warnings alone are not enough; action is needed. The people living in the regions hardest hit by the climate crisis are rarely those who have caused the situation to deteriorate. Now they have begun to ask who bears the responsibility.

“Climate justice cannot remain merely a beautifully phrased sentence in United Nations documents. When a family’s house is on fire, we don’t ask them to fill in fifty forms. We take action,” said Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah in his address to the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

Disaster forces action

Nepal produces just 0.1 per cent of the so-called greenhouse gases that are causing global warming. This means that the carbon footprint of a country with a population of around 31 million  accounts for just 0.4 per cent of the total carbon footprint of all the world’s countries. The biggest polluters in 2024 were Nepal’s neighbour China (33 per cent), the United States (11.7 per cent), India (8 per cent) and Russia (5 per cent).

Despite its own modest emissions, Nepal is one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis.

Prime Minister Shah’s message came just as the whole world was still reeling from the images of the devastation caused by flash floods. In his speech, he also emphasized the need for international cooperation. According to him, what is needed now is for everyone to commit to a common cause, resulting in investment in the adaptation measures and stronger infrastructure required by the climate crisis, in early warning systems, and in phasing out the fossil fuels that contribute most to global warming.

“The next time a warning is heard from the roof of the world, let us be ready to hear it and equipped to act.”

Sources: Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Finnish Meteorological Institute, IPCC, UNHCR, Yle, World Meteorological Organization, WHO, Amnesty International, The Guardian, UN News, ILO