The Lal Bakaiya River in Nepal’s Madhesh Province is no stranger to floods, as rising riverbeds, degraded Chure hills, and unplanned development turn monsoon rains into prolonged disasters. ICIMOD is strengthening local resilience through Community-Based Early Flood Warning Systems (CBFEWS) and innovative gamification of preparedness training, making life-saving knowledge accessible and engaging for all. Combined with integrated watershed management efforts, these initiatives aim to tackle the region’s ‘Too Much Too Little’ water crisis and break the cycle of recurring floods.
The Government of Nepal officially declared a drought emergency in the Madhesh Province on 24 July 2025, a rare occurrence in a region more often in the headlines for floods. While devastating floods and landslides across South Asia dominate the news, a slower, quieter, but no less catastrophic disaster is unfolding in the southeastern plains of Nepal. In Madhesh Province, widely known as Nepal’s ‘Grain Basket,’ a slow-onset drought is gripping farming communities at the heart of the nation’s food system.
Despite being in the middle of the monsoon season, the region has experienced persistently below-average rainfall. On 1 July, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) of Nepal forecasted low precipitation in Madhesh Province during this monsoon, as shown in Figure 1.
This rainfall deficit has severely disrupted the rice transplantation calendar, the most time-sensitive and critical phase of the rice production cycle. This delay is not just an agricultural concern; it signals the early stages of a food security crisis.
As of 27 July 2025, only 51.82% of rice land in Madhesh had been transplanted, compared to 92% by the same week in 2024. Madhesh typically accounts for around 27% of Nepal’s total rice-growing area (approximately 353,441 hectares) and produces nearly 1.28 million metric tons of rice annually, with an average yield of 3.63 metric tons per hectare. Such a sharp decline of over 40% is unprecedented in recent years. Any disruption cascades throughout the growing season in a farming community where planting windows are tightly synchronised with rainfall.
In response to these growing concerns, in July 2025 the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) conducted a situational analysis of the drought’s impact on rice production in Madhesh using a combination of satellite imagery, climatic indicators, and agricultural statistics. Analysis of Sentinel-2 (an Earth Observation satellite) imagery showed a significant reduction in vegetative cover in Madhesh province compared to the same period in 2024, as shown in Figure 2.
Based on our assessment, ICIMOD estimates that over 40% of Madhesh’s rice-growing area, nearly 142,000 hectares, is under significant drought stress. This could result in a potential production loss of approximately 400,000 – 450,000 metric tons of rice. Even if rains resume, recovery may be limited due to poor seedling establishment, soil moisture depletion, and missed crop growth stages.
The implications are severe. Nationally, Nepal grows rice on about 1.33 million hectares, producing over 4.9 million metric tons annually. A production shock in Madhesh could ripple across the country, raising food prices, increasing import dependency, impacting trade balances, and reducing household incomes. With agriculture contributing 24.1% to Nepal’s GDP and rice as its staple crop, this drought has become not only a regional crisis but a national economic and food security threat.
The Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) showed much of the region under moderate to severe drought in the Madhesh province, especially Mahottari, Dhanusa, and Siraha districts, as shown in Figure 3, which is further confirmed by the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite imaging data, as shown in Figure 4.
Both figures 3 and 4 show that the Mahottari, Dhanusa, and Siraha districts of Madhesh province are experiencing the most critical drought stress. The VCI map highlights widespread extreme drought throughout these districts, reflecting significant vegetation stress, while the SPI map confirms severe to extreme dry conditions due to prolonged rainfall deficits. These Earth Observation tools validate the scenario on the ground and demonstrate the value of remote sensing for early warning, damage assessment, and decision support.
Beyond the satellite-based evidence, Madhesh Province is currently experiencing all four major forms of drought. Meteorological drought has emerged from the persistent failure of the monsoon, while a hydrological drought, driven by an unusually dry winter, has drastically reduced water levels in rivers, canals, and groundwater reserves. These conditions have triggered a severe agricultural drought, with little to no rice transplantation taking place across the region. The crisis has now extended into a socio-economic drought, as prolonged water shortages disrupt livelihoods, strain local economies, and impact society.
As a response to this domino effect, the Madhesh Provincial Government declared the province as drought-stricken on 26 June 2025, followed by the Provincial Disaster Management Committee urging the federal government to escalate this status on 22 July 2025, resulting in a drought emergency being declared in the Madhesh Province.
To catalyse this, ICIMOD co-convened a multi-stakeholder meeting on 5 August 2025, bringing together representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD), and development partner World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The meeting served as a platform to discuss the development of a MoALD-led technical task force that would facilitate data sharing, produce timely advisories, and provide evidence-based policy recommendations. The proposed task force is expected to play a key role in enabling anticipatory action and strengthening Nepal’s drought resilience in the months and years ahead.
The unfolding drought crisis in Madhesh underscores the urgent need for robust early warning systems, timely response mechanisms, and science-driven policy action. In addition to this, recognising the relationship between Chure hills (upstream) and Madhesh (downstream), Integrated Water Resource Management is especially important in regions like this. As a regional knowledge centre, ICIMOD remains committed to supporting evidence-based decision-making through Earth Observation technologies, monitoring and outlook systems like the National Drought Watch Nepal, and strategic partnerships with government and development partners. The insights gained from this assessment highlight the scale of agricultural vulnerability and the transformative potential of integrating geospatial tools into disaster risk reduction and food security planning.