India recorded 16 major natural disasters in 2025, placing it among four countries in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region where extreme events have become a near-annual certainty, according to new analysis by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, known as ICIMOD.
Across the eight-nation Hindu Kush Himalaya region which spans parts of South and East Asia including India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China 1.2 million people were displaced or directly affected by disasters during the year. Economic losses across the region exceeded six billion dollars in 2024 alone, driven largely by floods, landslides, and storms.
The monsoon season hit hard. Intense rainfall triggered repeated flooding and landslides across India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh through 2025. Glacial lake outburst floods were also reported in select mountain locations.
India’s vulnerability is not new. ICIMOD’s analysis points to a pattern of overlapping hazards that the region has experienced for over a decade. The 2013 Kedarnath floods in Uttarakhand, which killed thousands, and the 2023 South Lhonak glacial lake outburst flood in Sikkim which swept through valleys with little warning both illustrate what researchers now call multi-hazard events.
Multi-hazard events occur when one disaster triggers or overlaps with another flood triggering landslide, or glacial melt accelerating downstream flooding. In mountain terrain, the consequences compound fast.
“Recent years show how floods, landslides, and other hazards are increasingly overlapping in mountain regions, amplifying damages to homes, infrastructure, and essential services,” said Pema Gyamtsho, Director General of ICIMOD.
A Global Crisis With a Himalayan Face
Globally, 2025 was a punishing year. The Emergency Events Database, or EM-DAT, recorded 358 natural disasters worldwide, killing 16,607 people, affecting 110.2 million, and causing economic losses of 169.7 billion dollars.
Asia bore the sharpest burden. A 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar on March 28 killed at least 3,820 people. A 6.0-magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan on August 31 killed approximately 2,200. Pakistan’s monsoon floods killed more than 1,000 and displaced 6.9 million people.
The HKH region sat at the centre of this wider Asian toll, its mountain geography making every disaster harder to reach and harder to recover from.
There is one piece of hopeful data. Long-term records from 1975 to 2024 show a decline in death rates and the number of people affected by disasters in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region after 2013. Researchers attribute this partly to improvements in early warning systems and disaster preparedness.
In eastern Nepal, a flood early warning system along the Khando River helped alert and evacuate nearly 60,000 people ahead of flooding in 2024.
“The numbers are still worrying, but the post-2013 trend suggests fewer lives are being affected year on year, which may reflect better climate services and preparedness in parts of the region,” said Manish Shrestha, a hydrologist at ICIMOD. “Sustained investment in preparedness and planning remains critical as risks continue to rise.”
Investment Gap India Cannot Afford
Researchers warn that early warning systems alone are not sufficient. Infrastructure planning, roads, bridges, housing, water systems, must account for multi-hazard risk before construction begins, not after disaster strikes.
In India, where Himalayan states like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Sikkim continue to see rapid infrastructure expansion into high-risk terrain, the warning carries particular weight. Without risk-informed investment, researchers say, communities will keep absorbing losses that grow larger with each passing monsoon.
Climate change is accelerating the timeline. Warmer temperatures are destabilising glaciers, intensifying rainfall events, and making the window for safe construction and habitation in mountain zones narrower each year.
Kedarnath was twelve years ago. South Lhonak was two. The Himalayas are not waiting.
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