In the aftermath of Nepal’s deadliest extreme flow disaster, impacted communities in the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli Corridor are struggling to come to terms with a deeply uncertain future. With the protracted search and rescue phase over and the monsoon season concluded, collective focus has officially shifted to early recovery efforts. Patterns of displacement are changing as those whose homes were destroyed move from “holding centers” to more established camps or temporary rooms for the coming winter. As roads and bridges are reestablished and grieving communities complete communal funerary rites, attention now shifts to difficult questions about displacement and resettlement, risk-sensitive land-use planning, and possibilities for long-term recovery.
Government of Nepal institutions are now working to complete the formal Post-Disaster Needs Assessment exercise that will help secure funding for recovery and reconstruction. The next step will be formulating a Post-Disaster Recovery Framework — a work plan that will guide medium to long term recovery efforts and structural initiatives to increase resilience. Along the way, authorities must now make difficult and unprecedented policy decisions about hazard zoning and post-disaster resettlement amid considerable uncertainty. These decisions will set the tone for how Nepal navigates future disasters, mass displacement events, and the process of reckoning with emergent and complex risks. The latest extreme flow disaster that devastated communities along the Budhi Gandaki River in the Gorkha District on October 11th is another terrifying reminder of the overwhelming scale of the unknown.
To meet this moment, this panel gathers a group of experts who have conducted research on post-disaster recovery and resilience in Nepal to discuss the current challenges that impacted communities face, to highlight key areas for policy, and to examine key questions and issues that will shape future patterns of recovery. While looking to the future, our discussion will also reflect on the past — examining uneven pathways of recovery in the wake of other disasters, and exploring the ways compounding disasters and vulnerabilities have intensified risks for the victims of this disaster now seeking to rebuild their lives.
This event is the latest in a series organized as part of Stimson’s multi-year project on Early Warning Systems for Cascading Disasters in Nepal.
This event is made possible with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.
Image: Austin Lord, Bhotekoshi River corridor just below Syaphrubesi, Oct 2026.
Featured Speakers
Sunil Tamang, PhD Candidate, School of Earth and Environment & Geospatial Research Institute, University of Canterbury
Sunil Tamang is an environmental research scientist with a Master of Applied Science in Disaster Risk Management and a Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies whose research interests include mapping, monitoring, and analysis of cryosphere landforms and/or systems, as well as assessing exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards. His PhD research focuses on mapping rock glaciers (permafrost) in the Himalayan region using remote sensing and GeoAI. Sunil also has significant on-the ground experience working to support humanitarian disaster response, reconstruction, and recovery activities in Nepal, particularly in the wake of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake – and he has contributed to collaborative and participatory ethnographic research on post-disaster recovery. He was born and raised in the old town of Syaphrubesi in Rasuwa district, which was tragically destroyed during this recent disaster.
Amina Maharjan, Senior Livelihood & Migration Specialist, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)
Dr. Amina Maharjan is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner with more than 15 years of experience working at the intersection of human mobility, climate adaptation, and disaster displacement in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. The role of migration during disasters and post-disaster recovery is one of her major areas of research, and she has conducted post-disaster research on livelihoods and migration in both Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts in the past. Her approach places a particular emphasis on science-policy-practice interface, gender equity and social inclusion, local knowledge systems, and anticipatory planning and adaptation. She is a Lead Author in Chapters 20: Poverty, Livelihoods, Mobility, Fragility of the Working Group II of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment report.
Sanam Aksha, Assistant Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Central Florida
Dr. Sanam Aksha is a hazard geographer and disaster researcher whose work focuses at the intersection of natural hazards, climate risk, and society, using geospatial analysis, quantitative modeling, and applied risk assessment to understand the physical and social dimensions of hazard impacts.His research examines community resilience, social vulnerability, and disaster recovery, with particular attention to how hazards such as hurricanes, flooding, landslides, earthquakes, extreme heat, and power outages affect places and populations unevenly. international and comparative research experience spans the Nepal Himalaya, South Asia, and the United States – and he collaborates with federal, state, local, and non-profit practitioners to improve data, evaluation, and program design for long-term recovery and resilient communities. He grew up in the Trishuli Valley in Nuwakot and went to high school in Betrawati, Rasuwa.
Sara Shneiderman, Ivan Head South-North IDRC Chair & Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology & the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs/Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia
Dr. Sara Shneiderman is a sociocultural anthropologist who has conducted ethnographic and policy-engaged research across South Asia and the Himalayas for over 30 years. Since 2015, she has led or participated in several transdisciplinary, international collaborative research partnerships about Nepal’s post-earthquake reconstruction, infrastructural development, and cascading mountain hazards, most recently Sajag-Nepal. Her publications on these themes include articles about reconstruction and resettlement in journals such as Current Anthropology and World Development, as well as the edited volume Infrastructures of Democracy: Politics and Processes of Road Building in Rural Nepal (2026 Martin Chautari Books. She also co-leads both the UBC Himalaya Program and UBC Disaster Resilience Research Network.
Jeremy Spoon, Research Professor of Anthropology, School of Earth, Environment, & Society, Portland State University
Dr. Jeremy Spoon is an anthropologist who co-produces applied research with Indigenous and rural peoples and government agencies related to local knowledge, disaster recovery, development, nature conservation, and cultural heritage in Nepal, the western United States, Germany, Hawai’i, and Kenya. His scholarship and facilitation utilizes participatory approaches yielding pragmatic and progressive outcomes, such as the integration of Indigenous knowledge into external disaster recovery interventions. He has been conducting research in Nepal since 2004 and recently led the 10-year NSF-funded “Nepal Critical Transitions Project,” which examined different pathways of post-disaster recovery in Rasuwa and Gorkha Districts in the wake of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake. Conducted in collaboration with the Central Department of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, used mixed quantitative and qualitative methods with community outreach to understand multidimensional household and settlement recoveries and trajectories of change.
Austin Lord, Senior Fellow, Energy, Water, & Sustainability Program, Stimson Center (Moderator)
Dr. Austin Lord is a scholar and practitioner with over 14 years of interdisciplinary research and applied disaster risk management experience in the Himalayan region. He leads Stimson’s project on Early Warning Systems for Cascading Disasters and other work on disaster risk governance and impact-based forecasting in Nepal. Since 2012, he has been conducting research on infrastructure development and socioeconomic change within the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli river corridor. He was intensively involved in relief and recovery efforts in Rasuwa district after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake; and his PhD research examined the 2015 Langtang avalanche and how people lived with different kinds of uncertainty in its aftermath. He plans to continue his long-term research in this region in the wake of the recent disaster.
