Landscapes At The Frontline
IFLA Asia-Pacific Position on the Nepal–Himalaya Disaster and the Escalating Climate Crisis Across the Region
28 August 2026
The International Federation of Landscape Architects – Asia Pacific Region (IFLA APR) expresses its profound concern and solidarity with the people and communities affected by the catastrophic glacier collapse, debris flows, landslides, and flash flooding along the Nepal–Tibet border, as well as with communities throughout the Asia-Pacific Region confronting increasingly severe and interconnected climate and environmental hazards.
The unfolding disaster in the Himalayan border region has caused extensive loss of life, displacement, and destruction of settlements, infrastructure, livelihoods, and landscapes. Initial scientific assessments and satellite observations indicate that the event was triggered by the collapse of a lower section of a Himalayan glacier, which generated a high-velocity avalanche of ice, rock, and debris and subsequently produced catastrophic flooding downstream. Debris dams and newly formed lakes have created continuing secondary flood risks, underscoring the cascading and interconnected character of hazards in rapidly changing mountain landscapes (Reuters, 2026a, 2026b).
IFLA APR extends its deepest sympathies to those who have lost family members, homes, livelihoods, and places of cultural and communal importance. We stand in solidarity with affected communities, landscape professionals, emergency workers, public agencies, researchers, civil society organisations, and all those engaged in rescue, recovery, and reconstruction.
An Event Within a Larger Regional Crisis
The disaster confronting Nepal and the adjoining Himalayan region cannot be understood in isolation.
The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2025 documents a region experiencing dangerous heat, exceptional rainfall and flooding, severe drought, continued glacier retreat, and record ocean heat. All 23 monitored glaciers in High-Mountain Asia lost mass during 2025. Extreme monsoon and tropical-cyclone rainfall produced devastating flooding in countries including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, while Japan, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea experienced their hottest summers on record. Parts of Iran and West Asia were simultaneously affected by persistent drought and severe dust storms (World Meteorological Organization [WMO], 2026). (World Meteorological Organization)
This follows a longer trajectory of accelerating regional climate risk. WMO reported that Asia is warming approximately twice as rapidly as the global average and that glacier mass loss, marine heatwaves, sea-level rise, heat extremes, flooding, drought, and tropical cyclones are increasingly affecting human and ecological systems throughout the continent (WMO, 2025). (World Meteorological Organization)
These conditions have profound consequences across the wider Asia-Pacific: from the glaciers and watersheds of Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bhutan, and China, to the river basins and rapidly urbanising landscapes of South and Southeast Asia; from communities exposed to cyclones, extreme rainfall, floods, landslides, and heat across Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam, the Lao PDR, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, to the low-lying coastlines and island landscapes of the Pacific.
The risks vary from place to place. Some communities confront too much water; others too little. Some face glacier loss and unstable mountain slopes, while others confront extreme urban heat, coastal erosion, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss, drought, or increasingly destructive storms.
What connects these experiences is an increasingly unstable relationship among climate, water, land, ecosystems, settlement, and human wellbeing.
For IFLA APR, this is fundamentally a landscape concern.
Our Existing Regional Commitment
This position is not a new direction for IFLA APR. It follows commitments that the Region has articulated for more than a decade.
The IFLA Asia-Pacific Region Landscape Charter, adopted in 2015, recognises landscapes as interconnected outcomes of biophysical, cultural, and social processes and explicitly includes land, water systems, marine areas, and island configurations within its understanding of landscape (IFLA Asia-Pacific Region [IFLA APR], 2015).
The Charter establishes sustainable management, guardianship, stewardship, human health and wellbeing, placemaking, and inclusivity as fundamental regional principles. It recognises a responsibility to maintain the health and diversity of landscapes and to integrate protection, production, recreation, and habitation for the benefit of all living things (IFLA APR, 2015). (IFLA APR)
Importantly, the Charter also places responsibility on the profession to ensure that communities are not diminished or endangered through inappropriate change. It calls for landscape considerations to be integrated into national, regional, and local policies; for meaningful participation by the public, Indigenous peoples, and local and regional authorities; for research and landscape assessment; and for mutual technical and scientific assistance among members (IFLA APR, 2015). (IFLA APR)
A decade later, the Landscape Architect Manifesto, adopted at the 2025 IFLA APR Regional Congress in Mumbai, India, sharpened this responsibility for the contemporary era.
Developed in the context of the Congress theme examining the region’s “Growth Paradox,” the Manifesto recognises the tensions among rapid economic growth, urbanisation, ecological degradation, biodiversity loss, the erosion of traditional knowledge, social inequality, and climate change. The Congress challenged landscape architects to reconsider what forms of growth are being pursued and who benefits from them (IFLA APR, 2025a). (IFLA APR)
The Manifesto consequently describes climate change as an immediate and everyday reality, particularly within the sensitive and vulnerable geographies of Asia-Pacific. It calls on landscape architects to embed resilience within the language and processes of design rather than treating climate adaptation as a temporary or isolated technical response (IFLA APR, 2025b). (IFLA APR)
It further asks the profession to work across scales, recognise Indigenous knowledge systems, reconnect nature with culture and society, address equity and justice, strengthen advocacy, and expand collaboration with other disciplines and institutional actors (IFLA APR, 2025b). (IFLA APR)
The present crisis therefore calls upon IFLA APR not simply to express concern, but to act upon the commitments the Region has already made.
From Disaster Response to Landscape Resilience
IFLA APR calls for a transition from repeated cycles of disaster, emergency response, reconstruction, and renewed loss toward long-term, landscape-led resilience.
Infrastructure remains essential, but infrastructure alone is insufficient.
Climate adaptation requires us to understand mountains and glaciers, forests and watersheds, rivers and floodplains, agricultural systems, settlements and cities, coastlines and oceans as interconnected landscape systems.
We therefore call for greater regional commitment to the following:
1. Landscape-led disaster risk reduction
Hazards should be understood at the scale at which ecological and hydrological processes operate—not solely within administrative or project boundaries.
Mountain catchments, watersheds, river basins, floodplains, coastlines, and ecological corridors must become fundamental spatial units for risk-informed planning and design.
2. Nature-based and ecosystem-based climate adaptation
Wetlands, forests, mangroves, floodplains, river corridors, urban forests, soils, coastal ecosystems, and green-blue networks should be recognised and invested in as essential climate infrastructure.
Their capacity to retain water, reduce heat, stabilise landscapes, protect biodiversity, store carbon, and provide social and cultural benefits should complement necessary engineered systems.
3. Climate-responsive planning for vulnerable landscapes
High-mountain settlements, glacial watersheds, river corridors, rapidly urbanising floodplains, informal settlements, coastal communities, delta landscapes, and small island states require anticipatory approaches based on future climate and hazard scenarios rather than historical environmental conditions alone.
4. Integration of risk information with landscape planning and design
Early warning systems save lives. Their effectiveness should be strengthened by linking hazard information with spatial planning, land-use regulation, evacuation landscapes, open-space networks, settlement patterns, watershed management, infrastructure location, and long-term adaptation strategies.
5. Climate justice and equitable adaptation
Those most exposed to climate hazards are frequently those with the fewest resources to adapt and, in many cases, those who have contributed least to the causes of global climate change.
Landscape adaptation must therefore protect not only physical assets but also people, livelihoods, cultural landscapes, community networks, heritage, land relationships, and the right to place.
6. Recognition of Indigenous and local knowledge
Asia-Pacific contains profound traditions of living with mountains, forests, rivers, monsoons, agricultural landscapes, coastlines, and islands.
Consistent with both the IFLA APR Landscape Charter and the 2025 Landscape Architect Manifesto, Indigenous and local knowledge should be engaged respectfully alongside scientific and technical knowledge in understanding landscapes, anticipating change, and developing context-responsive adaptation.
7. Transboundary landscape cooperation
Climate and ecological systems do not recognise political boundaries.
The Himalayas, major transboundary river basins, monsoon systems, tropical cyclones, marine ecosystems, migratory corridors, and shared coastlines demonstrate the need to move beyond fragmented responses.
The 2026 IFLA World and Asia-Pacific Regional Congress theme, “Liminal Landscapes: Shifting Boundaries of Watersheds and Coastlines,” is particularly timely in recognising that the sustainable planning, design, and management of watersheds and coastlines require collaboration that transcends administrative boundaries (IFLA World Congress, 2026). (IFLA)
8. Knowledge exchange and regional mutual assistance
The IFLA APR Landscape Charter already calls for members to share knowledge, research, and technical and scientific assistance.
We encourage Member Associations, universities, practitioners, researchers, and partner institutions to strengthen regional mechanisms for documenting climate adaptation practice, learning from disasters, sharing research and tools, and translating lessons from one landscape to another while remaining responsive to local context.
A Call to the Landscape Architecture Profession
The events unfolding in Nepal and across the Himalayan landscape offer another painful reminder that landscape architecture can no longer treat climate adaptation as peripheral to professional practice.
The 2015 Landscape Charter gave our Region principles of stewardship.
The 2025 Mumbai Manifesto challenged us to reconsider our mandate and make climate resilience intrinsic to landscape practice.
The climate realities confronting the Asia-Pacific now require us to translate those principles into sustained collective action.
IFLA APR therefore calls upon its Member Associations, landscape architects, educators, researchers, students, partner organisations, governments, communities, and allied disciplines to strengthen their collective commitment to:
anticipate rather than merely respond; adapt rather than repeatedly rebuild; restore rather than continuously degrade; collaborate across boundaries rather than work in isolation; and place landscape, ecology, culture, and community at the heart of climate resilience.
At this difficult moment, IFLA Asia-Pacific stands in solidarity with the people of Nepal, Tibet, and all communities across our Region experiencing climate and environmental disruption.
Their experiences remind us that climate action is no longer solely a commitment to future generations.
It is a responsibility to communities living with its consequences today.
As landscape architects of the Asia-Pacific, we reaffirm our responsibility to steward the landscapes that sustain life; protect the relationships among people, place, water, culture, and ecology; and use the collective knowledge, creativity, and agency of our profession toward a safer, more just, and more resilient region.
International Federation of Landscape Architects – Asia Pacific Region IFLA APR
References
International Federation of Landscape Architects. (2021). IFLA climate action commitment. https://www.iflaworld.com/ifla-climate-action-commitment-statement
International Federation of Landscape Architects – Asia Pacific Region. (2015). IFLA Asia-Pacific Region landscape charter. https://www.iflaapr.com/sites/default/files/content-files/IFLA-APR-Charter-Final.pdf
International Federation of Landscape Architects – Asia Pacific Region. (2025a). IFLA-APR Regional Congress 2025. https://www.iflaapr.com/ifla-apr-regional-congress-2025
International Federation of Landscape Architects – Asia Pacific Region. (2025b). The landscape architect manifesto. https://www.iflaapr.com/sites/default/files/content-files/Landscape%20Architect%27s%20Manifesto%20_Final%20Draft_15%20Nov%202025%201.pdf
International Federation of Landscape Architects – Asia Pacific Region. (n.d.). About IFLA APR. https://www.iflaapr.com/about-ifla-apr
IFLA World Congress. (2026). IFLA World and Asia-Pacific Regional Congress 2026: Liminal landscapes—Shifting boundaries of watersheds and coastlines. https://www.ifla2026.com/
Reuters. (2026a, August 27). How a glacier collapse triggered a deadly landslide and flooding along the Nepal-China border. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/how-glacier-collapse-triggered-deadly-landslide-flooding-along-nepal-china-2026-08-27/
Reuters. (2026b, August 28). China warns lake formed by glacier debris near Nepal border starting to overflow. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/china-rushes-minimise-risk-mountain-barrier-lake-near-border-with-nepal-2026-08-28/
World Meteorological Organization. (2025). State of the climate in Asia 2024. https://wmo.int/publication-series/state-of-climate-asia-2024
World Meteorological Organization. (2026). State of the climate in Asia 2025. https://wmo.int/resources/publication-series/state-of-climate-asia/state-of-climate-asia-2025