Nepal is a small and land locked country in South Asia. It is situated between the two large and densely populated countries of Asia - China in the North and India in the South, East and West. It has an area of 147, 181 sq. km. Within the short span of the country, all varieties of climate and topography can be found ranging from the sub-tropical to the alpine. The lowest altitude starts from 60 meters above the sea level to 8, 848 meters in the Northern part. Mt. Everest the highest peak in the world with an altitude of 8,848 meters.

Rugged and fragile geophysical structure of the country has made Nepal vulnerable to various types of natural disasters like: Glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF) flood, landslide, fire, earthquake, windstorm, hailstorm, thunderbolt, epidemic, avalanche, etc. These disasters occur almost every year in one part of the country or the other causing loss of life and heavy damage to physical properties.

A glacier is a huge flowing ices mass. The flow is an essential property defining a glacier. Usually a glacier develops under condition of low temperature but the cold climate in itself is not sufficient to create a glacier. There are such regions on the earth where the amount of total depositing mass of snow exceed the total mass of snow melting during a year in both the polar regions and high mountain regions. Stretch of such an area is defined as accumulation area. Thus, snow level is piled up year after year in the accumulation area because of the fact that the annual net mass balance is positive. As a result of snow layers piling of continuously, the deeper snow layers are compressed by the over burden pressure due to their own weight .As a consequence the density of the snow layers increases where by snow finally change to ice beyond a certain depth. Actually a glacier change sometimes change in size and shape subject to the influence of climate change. Glacier would advance with climate changing to a cool summer and a heavy snowfall in winter and monsoons seasons; the size would expand and the terminus would shift down to a lower attitude.

In the Himalayan region of Nepal glacier lakes are common. Mainly there are two types of glacier in the Himalaya.One is debris covered type glacier and the other is clean type glacier free from debris on the glacier surface. A total of 159 glacial lakes have been found in Koshi basin and 229 in Tibetan Arun basin. Among them 24 are potentially dangerous. The areas like: Upper Barun, Lower Barun, Chamlangtsho, Tsho Rolpa, Sabou, Dudh Kunda, Majang, Inja, Thulari have potentially dangerous glacier lakes. These lakes contain huge volume of water and remain in unstable condition, as a result, they can burst any time and such disaster may cause heavy loss of human life and physical property. About 14 such glacier lake outburst floods have taken place in the past.

Tsho Rolpa Glacier Lake is located in Gaurishanker Village Development Committee, Dolakha District of Nepal. It is situated at an altitude of 4580 meters from the sea level and its area is 1.65 square kilometers. Water volume in this lake has been estimated to be 80 million cubic meters. It has been observed that the physical size of this lake has increased by five times since 1960. In 1997 Glacier Lake Outburst (GLOF) Specialist Dr. J. Reynolds warned that the lake might burst in the summer of the same year. Moreover, a report of the Ministry of Science and Technology stated that if the lake will burst, it would affected 18 Village Development Committees (VDCs) of Dolakha and Ramechhap districts.  It was also stated in the above reports that some very necessary countermeasures should be taken immediately to reduce the extent of damage by the probable flood: Therefore, in view of the above reports and the increasing physical size of the lake and the trend of ice melting the Central Natural Disaster Relief Committee (CNDRC) decided to adopt necessary countermeasures. For this purpose the CNDRC constituted the Tsho Rolpa glacier lake Water Induced Disaster Prevention Committee in which the following dignitaries were involved:

Thus, some countermeasures are being adopted since June 1997.