In 2024 WoN reported on the deadly floods in Valencia, Spain in which nearly 300 people died. There it was shown that the deaths were avoidable. The right wing regional government, fanatical climate-change deniers Did nothing in response to warnings and worked hard to shift the blame on the national government and its Weather service. The recent far greater scale disaster on the Nepal-China border is not amenable to the present day impulse for immediate personal or parochial blame. Rather it is indicative of the consequences of human-made climate change in areas of the world least responsible for it. It is now clear that its effect on an integrated glacier rock formation was decisive. As things stand 1400 people have been killed and 6000 are “missing”. More, a whole landscape, Its society and economy has been destroyed to which the richer, greater=emissions-producing world is reluctant to recompense or even respond beyond the usual cliched murmurs.
Bangkok, capital of Thailand declared a flood disaster. Heavy rains submerged roads and homes. Heavy rains have been known in September before but with nothing like the present intensity. It is explained as yet one more “unprecedented” event whereas it is more likely an early indicator that the region is in for a Super El Nino as has been forecast.
Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia with a city population of 12 million an a wider metropolitan area of42 million people is facing a drinking water crisis in Super El Nino drought conditions. Previously it was subject to flooding and there was talk of the danger of reservoirs overflowing.. Its main reservoir level now however has fallen to historically low levels such that the ruins of one of 11 villages that had been inundated by the reservoir have emerged,. In addition and despite the 2023 protests against privatized water firms and renationalisation piped water does still not reach all parts of the city where water has been bought at considerable expense or residents have dug their own artesian wells into the water table to such a degree as to make Jakarta known as a sinking city. It is this that has prompted the building of a new capital city Nusantara which faces its own problems with forest fires. In the present situation the Jakarta public authority is sending out its own water trucks