According to a United Nations recount of Nepal’s worst-ever recorded disaster seismic instruments recorded a 5.2-magnitude event, leading scientists to believe an earthquake caused a glacial collapse, giving way to a massive deluge in the Nepali districts of Rasuwa and Nuwakot. At least 1300 people have been reported dead and 5000 missing at the time of this article, according to Nepali officials. The flood has had far-reaching transboundary consequences, as China has reported ceasing its rescue operations in Nepal/Tibet after scientists assessed a high likelihood that its own territories could experience a dangerous flood due to the accumulation of loose sediment in the Xizang autonomous region of Tibet and China, the Gyirong Port. This accumulation of debris and sediment has created a geo-hazard known as a barrier lake, which formed due to the buildup of debris from Nepal’s disastrous deluge blocking the transboundary Purepu Tsangpo river, causing a temporary lake (barrier lake) to form between Nepal and China. According to China's Ministry of Water Resources, 5 million metric tons of water could accumulate in this barrier lake, causing a serious risk for lower-lying territories within mainland China. Another close neighbor, India, has found multiple bodies washed up in states 250 miles from the deluge site, specifically in its northern states Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Melting Ice
Glacial melt for decades has been reported as an existential risk for the Himalayas. Scientists claim that since the 1950s these events are nearly six times more likely due to planetary warming. Furthermore, the Himalayas have experienced warming 65% faster from 2010-2020 than the previous decade, and scientists anticipate glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas could lose 80% of their current volume due to the current pace of warming.
Nepali scientists almost immediately attributed this tragedy directly to a warming climate. Nepal’s Foreign Minister, Shisir Khanal, called for a "global effort" to tackle climate change at an emergency press conference. Khanal claimed, congruently with much of the Global South, that Nepal has exceedingly low carbon emissions, but experiences the brunt of climate catastrophes. Additionally, he requested on behalf of the Nepali state, “the global community come together and preserve the Himalayan ecosystem.”
Global climate change and planetary warming are proving to have far-reaching consequences stretching beyond the geopolitical boundaries from which they originate. The transboundary nature of climate change necessitates global action and international cooperation to maintain climatic balance. The Earth has warmed about 1.4 degrees Celsius since the industrial period, and is on track to pass 1.5 degrees Celsius a threshold agreed not to be passed in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Climate scientists also unanimously concur that surpassing this threshold would lead prolonged ecological crises and extreme weather events like the glacial lake outburst flood the Nepalese have recently experienced.
Warming-induced glacial melt threatens a plethora of regions across the planet. A Nature report says that around 15 million people are immediately at risk for glacial lake outburst flooding from the major glacial systems on Earth: the Alps in Europe, the Andes in South America, and the Himalayas in Asia. Additionally, European scientists have predicted using deep learning that 75-88% of glaciers in the French Alps will melt by 2100. This melt will raise sea levels, substantially affecting cities below sea-level, like New Orleans, Louisiana and Amsterdam,Netherlands.
The warming cryosphere is also affecting towns and people that intimately rely on ice structures for their way of life. People indigenous to the Arctic, like the Inuit, are increasingly vulnerable to regional warming due to melting ice sheets, glaciers, and permafrost (frozen soil). Because of this melting, heat has intensified, and rising water temperatures have pushed away marine life, a vital food source for the Inuit community. Moreover, built structures are much less reliable due to hydraulic saturation warping steel and concrete foundations. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment of 2004 demonstrated areas like the Arctic have been warming twice as fast as the average global temperature since the early 2000's, and recently another Nature communications report has demonstrated since that the Arctic cumulatively has warmed four times faster than the globe. Similar geographies, like the Himalayas, are experiencing the same, according to an article published by the European Geosciences Union.
Hope for more climate action
Despite an increasingly grim-seeming picture, there is hope. Climate journalists would be remiss to document climate change and extreme weather without mentioning its biggest contributors, and how global communities are building solidarity across borders to keep the carbon majors accountable.
Litigation has become central to the climate justice discussion given recent advances in attribution science , despite decades of burying and suppressing scientific evidence, and landmark suits against polluters laying the foundation for reparative justice for communities bearing the brunt of the physical changes to the environment.
For instance the Inuits of the Arctic shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, filed a petition in the Inter-American Human Rights Court against the United States of America for its outstanding contribution to global carbon emissions. Although the suit was dismissed on procedural grounds, many scholars believe it has laid the groundwork for similar lawsuits. In 2013, the Athabasca people of Canada filed a petition against the Canadian government for its production of black carbon and its effects on their arctic environment, still pending judgment, where the proposed remedy offers an ideal ground to imagine how large scale reparation and planetary justice could look for the Global South .
Another good example is Milieudefensie, a Dutch climate justice NGO, that has sued Shell on multiple occasions at the Hague District Court of the Netherlands. Notably in Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell plc., the court found Royal Dutch Shell, now known as Shell, liable for human rights violations and forced the company to reduce its emissions to levels agreed upon and bound by the Paris Agreement of 2015, a 45% reduction by 2030. Although this case was overturned and litigation is ongoing, it sets a global standard for how NGO’s, individuals, and other organized interest are keeping the major forces behind planetary warming accountable not only through legal action, but through organizing across borders, deploying innovative legal strategies.
Many states, territories, and municipalities within the US have followed suit; Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Boulder County, Louisiana, and California to name a few. But in the United States, climate litigation is met with significant pushback; Republican led states and senators have either signed or submitted legislation barring the suit of energy companies for climate-related deaths and transboundary climate torts. Most notably, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas introduced a bill to the US Senate called the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act ” to stop suits against polluters. A few states, including Louisiana, and Oklahoma have also successfully passed legislation barring these suits. Their central argument is companies shouldn’t be liable for deaths or other torts that happen outside and at times inside of their jurisdiction. But according to legal experts like Rachel Rothschild, associate professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, in an article forthcoming in Yale Law review and dozens of recent amicus briefs, this argument ignores 40 years of relevant American case law. Rothschild words below.
“As this Essay shows, the Second Circuit and Maryland Supreme Court got their history wrong: for nearly four decades, state common law has been available for transboundary pollution claims. The Supreme Court preserved such actions in 1987 after years of wrestling with the use of federal versus state common law over transboundary pollution and the effect of federal legislation on tort suits. In an opinion attentive to states’ traditional police powers over natural resources, the Court in International Paper Co. v. Ouellette upheld the use of state common law for tort suits over transboundary pollution so long as such cases did not obstruct federal permitting programs. Since then, tort suits involving transboundary environmental issues have proceeded under state law against a variety of companies and polluters.
On October 5th, 2026 the Supreme Court of the United States will hear an appeal brought by Suncor, Exxon and a litany of energy companies concerning whether state or federal courts have the standing to adjudicate climate torts. Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County is a landmark and will have massive implications for our global energy economy and environment. If Boulder County Commissioners are successful, state courts will have standing to hear cases to hold big oil accountable for the effects of climate pollution and the remedial pathway could lay the groundwork for the new burgeoning energy economy in North America.
Moving away from fossil fuels into the clean energy economy is the only hope to prevent more climatic disasters from happening, and Nepal is our most salient reminder. The groundwork has been laid in the international treaties states and civil society have organized, its now time to follow them. If litigation and social movements are the avenues to reach remedy and justice, we should embrace them fully.
