Nepal is seeking about $5 billion for the first phase of recovery after the August disaster. The bigger question is whether international assistance will rebuild the Nepal that existed before the flood or help build a country better prepared for the next one.
Nepal should not measure the success of its post-flood recovery by how quickly it replaces the roads, bridges and hydropower plants that were destroyed. It should measure success by whether those systems are safer when the next disaster comes.
The question is becoming unavoidable.
Investigations — for subscribers
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Investigations
It took just minutes for a transboundary surge of ice, water, and rock to erase decades of development along the Bhote Koshi river system.As the ruins of Rasuwa sit frozen in time, a country that emits almost zero greenhouse gases faces an unimaginable NPR 723 billion recovery bill. How did a localized mountain anomaly morph into a macroeconomic catastrophe that a nation must bear alone?
Investigations
As Nepal buries more than 1,450 dead from the Langtang flood, a US website claims its new leaders were secretly "groomed for power." We went through the leaked document, the funding trail, and the article's own facts and found more holes than proof.