Episode
I Asked a Nepal Expert How The Devastating Floods Happened. What He Said Will Shock You
- Podcast
- Climate Unf*cked
- Published
- Sep 16, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3022
- Processing state
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- https://episode.flightcast.com/01M2MSZ25E9MP591Q948FKTWHZ.mp3
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Summary
Manjeet Dhakal is Advisor to the Chair of the UN's Least Developed Countries Group and Director of Climate Analytics' South Asia office. He’s been involved with climate negotiations and diplomacy for almost 20 years and now helps the world's most climate-vulnerable nations negotiate international climate policy. He's currently completing a PhD and recently published research on climate attribution in Nepal. Dr Manal Shehabi, an applied development economist and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford's Institute for New Economic Thinking, who also teaches Economics for Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and sits on Oxford's Children and Climate Initiative. On August 26th, 2026, a catastrophic flood devastated Nepal's Langtang Valley. A mass of ice and rock detached from a Himalayan peak at approximately 5,200 metres and triggered a flood that has killed more than 1,300 people and left 5,000+ missing. This conversation walks through what actually happened, why the Himalayas are warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, why Nepal producing 0.1% of global emissions makes this a sobering example of climate injustice, and much more. —— Manjeet’s July paper Climate-induced loss and damage in Nepal: attribution analysis and institutional readiness for international support: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.3389/fclim.2026.1782991/full Manal Shehabi: https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/manal-shehabi —— Subscribe to the Climate Unf*cked podcast at https://climateunfucked.substack.com/ And connect with me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-coop/ —— Chapters 0:00 What Manjeet saw on the ground 5:08 The new kind of disaster we're facing 9:18 Why the Himalayas are called the third pole 10:13 How permafrost collapse triggered the…