Nepal must press the international community to recognise the growing toll of climate change on the Himalayas, Prime Minister Balendra Shah said on Wednesday, as the country struggles to recover from devastating floods along the Bhotekoshi river.

Addressing the House of Representatives, Shah said the scale of the disaster had raised a deeper question about why such an extreme event had struck the region.

“As we work around the clock to manage the damage from this sudden and massive disaster, another profound question has emerged: How did this disaster happen to us?” Shah said.

He said Nepal needed to bring the climate-related risks facing the Himalayan region to the international community with greater urgency.

Experts have said the Bhotekoshi flood in Rasuwa was triggered by a collapse of ice and rock in the Himalayan region, followed by an avalanche, Shah said, describing it as one of the biggest disasters to hit the area.

“This incident is a serious indication that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing along with climate change,” Shah said. “That is why we must remain alert. At the same time, the time has come for us to strongly present to the international community the disasters we are facing because of climate change.”

Shah said addressing the effects of climate change was a shared responsibility because the crisis itself was global.

“The mitigation and management of its impacts is understood to be a shared responsibility of the international community,” he said.

His remarks came as rescue and recovery operations continued across flood-hit Rasuwa and neighbouring districts. The disaster swept through settlements and hydropower projects along the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli river system, leaving widespread destruction and thousands of people dead or missing.

The death toll from floods has risen to 1,127, with bodies recovered from several districts and neighbouring India, Nepal Police said on Wednesday afternoon.

The government is also seeking to turn its climate concerns into a broader diplomatic campaign. In an interview with Kantipur TV’s Fireside, Foreign Affairs Minister Shisir Khanal said Nepal would seek to move international discussions away from treating post-disaster assistance simply as humanitarian aid or bilateral grants and towards climate justice and compensation.

Khanal said Nepal contributes negligibly to global greenhouse gas emissions but is bearing severe consequences of a warming climate, including changes in the Himalayan environment and increasingly destructive disasters. The Ministry of Finance has sent a formal climate compensation claim to international partners, he said, adding that Nepal would raise the issue at international forums.

Nepal has long argued that countries with a relatively small contribution to global emissions are among those most exposed to the consequences of climate change. The government has increasingly sought international support for the protection of the Himalayas, warning that the loss of glaciers and disruption of mountain ecosystems could threaten water security far beyond Nepal.

The Bhotekoshi disaster has added urgency to that argument, with the floods damaging homes, roads and hydropower infrastructure and leaving rescue teams searching for people believed to be trapped or missing.