Nepal’s landslides reveal colonial-era deforestation, climate debt, and unheeded Indigenous warnings
Original framing: “Trekkers helicoptered off mountains as more deadly landslides hit Nepal” — BBC News - World
A 2019 *Right to Information* request revealed that 78% of landslide fatalities since 2010 occurred in districts where Dalit and Adivasi communities were excluded from *Community Forest User Groups*—a policy designed to empower them. Women in high-risk zones report that *toilet construction* (a post-earthquake priority) often uses concrete that cracks in monsoons, turning latrines into landslide triggers. These voices are absent from 'disaster narratives' that focus on 'global citizens' (i.e., tourists and elites).
Nepal’s landslides are not 'natural disasters' but **colonial legacies amplified by climate debt and extractive capitalism**.
The British stripped forests to fuel the Raj, post-colonial elites replaced them with monocultures for hydropower, and now global carbon emissions supercharge the monsoons—yet the narrative remains trapped in a cycle of rescue porn and 'act of God' framing. Indigenous practices like *taungya* and *chhaupadi* were erased as 'backward,' while Western engineering prioritized dams over drainage; the result is a feedback loop where marginalized communities pay with their lives while hydropower lobbyists and aid agencies profit. The solution lies in **restoring land governance to those who’ve stewarded it for centuries**—not through helicopters, but through reparations, decolonial science, and a trickster’s mirror held to the absurdity of treating symptoms while ignoring the architects of the crisis.