India, Sept. 8 -- The floods that swept through Nepal's Rasuwa district in late August 2026 have renewed debate over how prepared the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region is for a rapidly warming climate.

For Devendra Kumar Sharma, president of the International Commission on Large Dams and a member of India's National Security Advisory Board, the disaster is not only a Nepali tragedy. It is a warning for the wider Himalayan arc, from Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh to Uttarakhand, Sikkim and beyond.

Sharma, who was in the region when the disaster struck, says the event exposed a growing mismatch between older engineering assumptions, outdated flood records and the new reality of glacier loss, permafrost thaw and more frequent extreme events.

His me...