On the 28th August 2026, Nepali officials roughly doubled their tally of missing people to over 1,900, saying hydropower producers had only recently shared a count of unaccounted-for workers at projects in the devastated river valleys. It is feared that over 900 people are missing from hydropower projects.

This might be a watershed moment for the disaster-torn hydropower boom in South Asia, funded many times by International Financial Corporations and Multilateral Banks like ADB and World Bank, and also Chinese Exim bank.

Hundreds of hydropower labourers, engineers and locals are currently trapped inside tunnels of projects like Upper Trishuli 1 and Trishuli 3A, the latter funded by a loan from China’s Exim bank in the flood ravaged Nepal. More than 350 have been rescued by the valiant efforts of Nepal Army, but many more are still trapped inside the tunnel, including Indians.

Continue reading “Nepal Disaster and Hydropower: How Global Banks Downplayed the Risks they Knew” →