The Cabinet meeting on Wednesday declared Madhesh Province a disaster crisis zone, citing acute water shortages caused by prolonged drought.

According to Minister for Water Supply and Sanitation Pradeep Yadav, the decision was made based on a proposal by the Ministry of Home Affairs. All eight districts of the province are affected.

“The prolonged lack of rainfall has severely impacted irrigation systems due to a drop in groundwater levels. Water sources have dried up, creating an extreme shortage of drinking and irrigation water for the public,” said Yadav.

The government made the declaration under Sub-section 1 of Section 32 of the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act, 2017.

The law allows the government to declare any area a disaster-threatening zone by publishing a notice in the Nepal Gazette, specifying its boundaries and the duration of the declaration, if deemed necessary and expedient due to the occurrence of a severe nature of disaster.

A prolonged dry spell during the peak monsoon season has brought much of Nepal’s Tarai region to the brink of an agricultural crisis.

Due to acute water shortages, farmers are unable to transplant paddy. The drought has left seedbeds dry, and paddy saplings are withering, sparking fears of an impending food shortage in Nepal’s major rice-producing region.

Also, the provincial government of Madhesh a few days ago declared the province a drought-hit zone. The provincial administration used fire trucks and tankers to distribute drinking water, but the efforts fell short of meeting agricultural needs.

The scarcity of water during mid-monsoon in the Tarai, Nepal’s food basket, threatens not only farmers’ livelihoods but also the national economy.

Experts warn that the situation highlights the country’s growing vulnerability to climate change, marked by increasing frequency of extreme weather events, including droughts, erratic rainfall, and unseasonal temperature shifts.