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Building boom puts 300,000 people in the path of potential Himalayan disasters

Photo: BBC

At least 300,000 people in parts of the Himalayan region could now be living in the path of potential disasters, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that the amount of built-up land in high-risk zones in northern Nepal, parts of south-eastern Tibet and a corner of India's Uttarakhand had grown by about 45% between 2016 and 2023.

In areas particularly threatened by flooding from glacial lakes, development increased even faster, rising by almost 78% over the same period, according to the peer-reviewed study published in Scientific Reports.

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