International Rivers

PRESS RELEASE | After Nepal’s deadliest flood, civil society calls on World Bank to stop backing high-risk hydropower

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As Bank shareholders meet in Bangkok and Nepal seeks reconstruction support, civil society asks the World Bank Group not to rebuild the same risks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 15, 2026

BANGKOK – As the World Bank Group holds its Annual Meetings in Bangkok this week, 122 civil society organizations from 38 countries are calling on the institution to stop financing large hydropower in risk-prone mountain valleys, following Nepal’s August flood disaster.

The groups set out their demands in a letter addressed to World Bank President Ajay Banga, IFC Managing Director Makhtar Diop and the Boards of Executive Directors, delivered this week to senior World Bank officials. Financing for Nepal’s recovery is among the issues on the table at the meetings.

A foreseeable disaster

On 26 August 2026, a rock-ice avalanche on the Nepal–Tibet border sent a flash flood down the Bhotekoshi–Trishuli river corridor. Nepal’s disaster authority, NDRRMA, has reported 1,455 people were killed and 5,285 remain unaccounted for.

Among the missing are hundreds of workers at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project, financed by the World Bank Group’s private-sector arms, the IFC and MIGA, and co-financed by a consortium of other development finance institutions. 

Civil society groups warned IFC in 2017 that the project faced grave earthquake, glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF), and climate risks. Yet IFC’s 2018 environmental and social review concluded that GLOF risks in the basin were low. An Independent Panel of Experts, commissioned by the Asian Development Bank and also reporting to IFC, later found that the floods in September 2024 had put workers at risk. In May 2025, the Panel recommended a climate resilience assessment covering disaster risks. That assessment has yet to be conducted.

Systematic failures

The signatories argue that the disaster’s toll reflects systemic failures in how the World Bank Group finances hydropower. The World Bank continues to back dams in high-hazard mountain valleys, while its safeguard rules let projects advance without a full assessment of the risks. And it is scaling up hydropower lending worldwide, deepening countries’ reliance on a technology that climate change is making riskier and less dependable.

What the groups are asking

The letter calls on the World Bank Group to stop treating large hydropower as a climate solution, and to:

  1. Declare risk-prone mountain rivers no-go zones for large hydropower and other mega-infrastructure, starting with High Mountain Asia.
  2. Impose an immediate moratorium on all large and cascading hydropower across its portfolio until independent, basin-wide risk reviews are done.
  3. Close the loopholes that allow projects to be approved and funded before risk assessments and safeguard plans are complete.
  4. Support Nepal’s recovery through reparations and grants, not new debt that rebuilds the same risks.
  5. Help hydropower-dependent countries diversify their energy systems.

Why it matters this week

Decisions on how Nepal rebuilds are being shaped now. Nepal’s Finance Minister, Swarnim Wagle, met President Banga in Washington this month to discuss support for reconstructing infrastructure damaged in the floods, and the Annual Meetings in Bangkok continue that conversation. 

At the same time, the World Bank Group is moving back toward financing large dams through its 2026 Hydropower Approach Paper. The groups warn that rebuilding hydropower in the same high-risk valleys would expose workers and communities to the next disaster.

The signatories

The letter is endorsed by 122 organizations from 38 countries, nearly half of them from South Asia, including 24 from Nepal. Signatories range from Nepali Indigenous, youth and legal groups to river, climate and finance-accountability networks across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

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