Every time a major disaster happens, we search for an explanation and we seldom get all the answers.
When floods sweep through communities, homes collapse, families are displaced and lives are lost, the world quickly reaches for a familiar answer: climate change.
Climate change is real. There should be no debate about that. Human activity has played a significant role in damaging ecosystems, changing weather patterns and contributing to a growing climate crisis.
But as someone who has worked in the humanitarian and disaster response space, I believe we also have a responsibility to ask whether that is the full story.
I have worked in and responded to numerous disasters across South Africa. I have seen communities devastated by floods, fires, storms and other emergencies. I have witnessed what happens after the cameras leave, when families are still displaced, when livelihoods have disappeared and when rebuilding takes months or even years.
Experience on the ground teaches you something important: disasters are rarely simple.
In Nepal, this raises another important question. Beyond climate change and extreme weather, what is happening in the mountains themselves?
The Himalayas are increasingly affected by roads, hydropower projects, construction, tourism development and other forms of human activity in already fragile ecosystems. What impact does this work have on mountain stability, forests, rivers and natural water systems?
These are not accusations or attempts to deny climate change. Climate change is real. But if we are serious about understanding disasters and preventing future loss of life, we must be willing to examine the full picture, including whether human development, environmental interference and changes to these fragile landscapes may also be contributing to greater vulnerability.
A flood may begin with extraordinary rainfall. But what turns that rainfall into a catastrophe?
Was the river system neglected? Were wetlands destroyed? Were forests removed? Were homes built in dangerous flood zones because people had nowhere else to go? Did poor infrastructure fail? Were warnings ignored? Was there adequate disaster planning? Did poverty leave communities with no choice but to live in vulnerable areas?
These are uncomfortable questions. But they matter.
The climate crisis may intensify weather events, but human decisions often determine how devastating those events become.
We cannot speak about climate without speaking about deforestation. We cannot speak about floods without examining destroyed wetlands, blocked drainage systems, poor infrastructure and uncontrolled development. We cannot speak about vulnerable communities without confronting poverty, inequality and governments that fail to prepare for predictable risks.
This is particularly important in the humanitarian sector.
Our responsibility cannot simply begin when disaster strikes. We cannot arrive with food parcels, blankets and emergency supplies and believe that our work is complete. Humanitarian response must also ask why communities were vulnerable in the first place and what can be done to prevent the next disaster.
Climate change is part of that conversation. Human responsibility is another.
And perhaps this is where we need greater honesty.
Sometimes it is easier to blame a global crisis than to confront local failures. Climate change is real, but it should never become a convenient explanation that prevents us from examining corruption, poor governance, environmental destruction, weak infrastructure or failures in disaster preparedness.
Both things can be true at the same time.
The planet is changing and Humans have contributed significantly to that change.
Humans are also making communities more vulnerable through the decisions we make, the environments we destroy and the warnings we fail to act upon.
As humanitarian workers, we see the consequences of these failures in the faces of ordinary people.
The mother trying to find shelter for her children.
The elderly person who has lost everything.
The family standing where their home once stood.
The child whose life has been permanently altered by something they did not cause.
For them, the debate over terminology matters far less than the reality of what comes next.
Will they receive help?
Will they be able to rebuild?
Will the same disaster happen again?
And most importantly, could more have been done to protect them before disaster struck?
Perhaps that is the question we should be asking.
Not simply, Was this caused by climate change?
But rather:
What created the conditions that allowed this event to become a human catastrophe?
Climate change is real. The climate crisis is real. Human activity has played a major role in bringing us here.
But if we truly care about protecting lives, we must be willing to look beyond a single explanation.
Because understanding disaster requires us to look at the climate, certainly.
But also at our actions.
