Several devastating floods and landslides hit Nepal during this year’s monsoon season. The most recent occurred in late September, affecting millions of people, causing widespread loss of life, and considerable destruction of infrastructure, including ravaging 26 hydropower projects with a total loss of over 1,500 MW of hydropower. In the face of climate-related water shocks, Nepal faces a unique challenge to its hydropower ambitions, which are further amplified by the country’s specific hydrological landscape.
Nepal’s susceptibility to climate shocks is worsened by its natural geological and hydrological landscapes. Furthermore, its approach to water resources development only serves to magnify the impacts of these shocks. While Nepal cannot change its natural landscape, it is crucial to reconsider its water resources development strategy, moving away from colonial era heavy infrastructure development models that aimed to control nature.
The unruly and unpredictable nature of Nepal’s rivers and hydrological landscape surpasses the capacity of man-made structures such as embankments, river diversions, barrages, and dams. Instead, the country should prioritize investments in initiatives that empower local communities to effectively manage and adapt to the challenges posed by climate change.
Nepal’s Natural Hydrological Landscape beyond Control
The Koshi is Nepal’s largest river. It originates in the northern slopes of the Himalayas on the Tibetan plateau, where it begins its journey southward through Nepal, draining one-third of the country’s Himalayan region. Before entering the southern plains from the Mahabharat Range, the Koshi is formed by the convergence of seven tributaries. It then flows through the Terai region of Nepal before crossing into India and eventually joining the Ganges.
The Koshi’s riverine environment has remained unruly, destructively volatile, and extremely complex to govern, earning it the name “sorrow of Bihar” or the “river of sorrow.” During the British colonial era, the Koshi in northern Bihar, then part of Bengal, served as a laboratory for the British colonial ecological paternalism of centralizing revenues and controlling people by dominating nature through large-scale infrastructure projects such as barrages, diversions, and dams. They attempted numerous times to control the river’s flow by constructing barrages and embankments and even thought of building a dam. They failed, nevertheless. The river’s natural features proved too formidable for the British to comprehend and control.
Shortly after its independence, India entered into the Koshi Agreement with Nepal, aiming to construct a barrage across the river to regulate its flow. The Koshi barrage was constructed in 1962. However, the river has breached the embankments eight times since then, leading to catastrophic floods in both Nepal and Bihar. Koshi is not the only river with such characteristics. Most Nepali rivers are unruly and have unpredictable flows due to the country’s distinctive hydrological landscape shaped by its unique topography.
Nepal has an exceptionally steep gradient. In a narrow 93-155 mile strip, Nepal’s altitude spans from the highest point of almost 9,000 (Mount Everest) to the lowest point at 59 meters in the southern Terai region. The drastic changes in altitude shape three geographical regions: Himal, Hilly, and Terai. Himal covers 16 percent of Nepal’s total land area and is where most larger rivers originate. Due to the higher altitude and steep descent, rivers in this region flow with great force and carry a significant amount of alluvium – rocks, sandy silt, and other elements. The young age of the Himalayan rocks, combined with the seismic activity in the Himalayan earthquake belt, contributes to the significant discharge of large amounts of alluvium into rivers in this region, turning the rivers flow fuller, turbulent, and rapid.
The Hilly (Pahar) region, which represents 65 percent of the total land area, receives ample rainfall during the monsoon season, contributing to the volatility of rivers and adding more alluvium from mountains and hills into the water course. From the Hilly region, rivers flow into Nepal’s low-lying plain region of Terai, which covers 17 percent of Nepal’s land. As rivers meander gently through the plains, they swiftly deposit alluvium carried from the Himalayas and Hilly regions onto their banks and beds. This causes Nepali rivers to rapidly alter their course from the elevated riverbeds to the lower-lying surrounding areas.
In addition to the specific topographic and geological attributes, the ongoing climate crisis, which is marked in the region by the rapid melting of glaciers and heavy monsoons, further intensifies the turbulent nature and unpredictable flow of Nepali rivers due to the increased water flow and sediments coming from the Himalayas and hilly areas.
Nevertheless, the unique topographical landscape has also given Nepal an exceptional hydropower potential that drives the country’s current efforts and national strategy to become a hydro-powerhouse of South Asia.
Nepal’s Newfound Dynamics in Hydropower Production
Nepal is known for having the world’s second-highest freshwater reserves, owing to thousands of perennial rivers, monsoon precipitation, ice caps, and snow melting in the Himalayas. Additionally, its mountainous terrain and steep gradient create a distinctive hydropower landscape and potential. Out of the reported 83 gigawatts total potential, 43 gigawatts of hydropower production is calculated to be economically and technically feasible. Accordingly, Nepal’s national strategic plan aims to become a regional hydro-powerhouse by generating 30,000 MW of electricity by 2035.
Over the last decade, Nepal has made headway in realizing its hydropower potential. According to national statistics, the hydropower production capacity reached 3,157 megawatts in 2023, marking a 437 MW increase from the previous year. The country has also been expanding its transmission infrastructure, with a total of 6,508 circuit kilometers, and 2,281 circuit km of transmission lines under construction. Total population access to electricity reached 99 percent. In 2024, Nepal achieved the status of a net electricity exporter, importing a total of 1,895 million units (MU) of electricity and exporting 1,946 MU of electricity.
Both public and private sectors actively invest in various hydropower projects, including run-of-river (RoR), peaking-run-of-river, and storage. The government has granted over 5,000 licenses to private producers under produce-purchase agreements (PPAs). Additionally, foreign companies and international institutions are investing in and financing numerous large-scale hydropower projects. The country aims to export excess energy to neighboring states, especially India and Bangladesh.
While Nepal has the potential to provide hydroelectricity to the energy-hungry South Asian market, it should not ignore the high risks associated with the hydropower curse. Regrettably, Nepal possesses all the conditions for such a curse, as evidenced by its specific ecological and hydrological characteristics.
Sensitive Hydrological Landscape
While Nepal’s goal of harnessing and exporting hydropower has attracted investors, the country’s hydropower vision faces geological challenges that not only put the country’s strategic hydropower vision at risk but also increased its susceptibility to the destructive impacts of climate-related water shocks.
Nepal’s geographical and hydrological features pose challenges for the hydropower industry that can further intensify the impacts of climate-induced water shocks. The Himalayas are among the most sensitive ecosystems to the effects of climate change. The region is already undergoing ecological changes that are detrimental to aquatic life, riparian ecosystems, and socio-economic stability. The accelerated melting of ice caps and glaciers in the Himalayas is disrupting the seasonal flow of freshwater, leading to unpredictable and volatile rivers and increasing the risk of flash floods that threaten hydropower infrastructure. Recent floods and landslides have swept away numerous hydropower projects, both operational and under construction.
Climate shocks also pose threats to the country’s hydroelectricity transmission infrastructure. Recent floods damaged some transmission lines, causing the electric grid to lose hundreds of megawatts of electricity. Moreover, the challenging mountainous terrain also hinders transmission line projects, leading to time and funds overrun. In 2022, the World Bank withdrew its support from the country’s two major transmission line projects due to recurrent delays. In addition to rugged terrain, financial and institutional factors such as insufficient funds, land acquisition for transmission towers, forest clearance, and securing the right of way further hinder the expansion of hydropower infrastructure, including transmission lines.
Moreover, the time and space variations in the availability of freshwater resources in the country hinder its hydropower production capacity. Approximately 60-90 percent of Nepal’s annual precipitation of 1,530 mm occurs during the four-month monsoon season from June to September, with 55-80 percent of the total 225 billion cubic meters of run-off happening within this period. The remaining months are dry.
One could argue that increasing the storage capacity might help alleviate this issue. However, the problem is exacerbated by the uneven spatial distribution of hydropower landscapes across the country. Most potential storage sites (dams and reservoirs) in Nepal are located in the lower reaches of rivers, severely limiting the ability to control water flow in the upper reaches. Furthermore, the steep terrain and deep river valleys in the upper reaches pose significant geographical challenges to expanding storage capacity, even with the construction of taller dams.
Hydropower Curse
The hydropower curse, a form of resource curse, refers to the challenges faced by developing countries with abundant freshwater endowments as they strive to become hydropower exporters. In these countries, problems such as mounting debt, limited diversification of the domestic economy, corruption, geopolitical factors, and environmental degradation often outweigh the advantages of heavy investment in the hydropower sector.
The substantial capital investment and operational costs, changing local economies, diversion of resources towards hydropower, displacement of local communities, and revenue losses caused by climate-related damage to hydropower plants often eclipse the significant investment in such projects. In the case of Nepal, besides political instability, poor governance, lack of transparency, and inadequate inter-sectoral coordination, the country’s geographical and natural hydrological characteristics exacerbate its susceptibility to the hydropower curse.
In regard to the recent floods, the government failed to prepare for the expected heavy monsoon rains and received criticism for its inadequate preventive, rescue, and relief plans prior, during, and after the disaster. Instead of investing in warning systems, and social capital to boost peoples’ resilience and improve their ability to cope and adapt, Nepal allocates resources to large physical hydropower projects. This is an invitation for the hydropower curse.
The choice is between an attractive vision and a harsh daily reality. While envisioning Nepal as a major hydropower producer is attractive, the harsh reality is that millions of Nepalis are losing their hard-earned assets, scarce resources, livelihoods, and even lives to the recurring climate shocks, mainly during the four months of monsoon.
In making its choice, Nepal can look at examples in neighboring countries and nearby regions. Bhutan’s stumbling aspiration to become a major hydropower exporter in South Asia and Laos’ ambition to be “the battery of Asia” serve as cautionary tales of the hydrological curse.