Blatten: what price for preserving Swiss mountain life?

In Blatten, in the Lötschental valley in Valais, an estimated nine million cubic metres of ice, mud and rock crashed down a nearby mountain on May 28, wiping out the village. The few houses that remained intact were later flooded. Keystone / Cyril Zingaro

There has been a huge outpouring of solidarity in Switzerland for the people of Blatten. Yet debate around the cost of protecting mountain villages has also arisen – tactlessly fast. Is the divide between the Alpine regions and the lowlands growing?

The debris had hardly settled in the devastated village of Blatten when voices in the heart of urban Switzerland could be heard asking: “What is life in the Alps worth to us as a society? Whatever it takes?”

‘Who will relocate?’

It was a breach of taboo: an editorial in the NZZ am SonntagExternal link openly called into question Swiss solidarity between mountainous areas and the lowlands. From an office in downtown Zurich, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief suggested that people that should start moving away from mountain villages. “The less there is, the less that can be destroyed. Who will relocate?” he wrote.

Meanwhile, in the Lötschental valley in canton Valais, the mayor promised that “we will rebuild all our homes”.

That the debate arose so quickly shows how much it had already been brewing. It also drives home just how pressing the question is in an Alpine country whose mountains are starting to crumble under the effects of climate change.

The call from Zurich did not go down well with the rest of the country, however. The day it was published, the editorial sparked widespread criticism for “lacking in respect.”

The following Monday, Anna Giacometti, a centre-right Radical-Liberal parliamentarian from canton Graubünden, was at the Federal Palace in Bern. The journey from her home in the Bregaglia valley to the parliament building takes five hours. It is the longest commute of any Swiss member of parliament.

‘Huge solidarity’

“It’s not every day that a member of the federal government comes to a mountain valley,” Giacometti says, remembering back to 2017 when she was mayor of Bregaglia, a municipality comprising a dozen villages, including Bondo.

Then, too, the mountain struck with a force that no one could have imagined. Eight hikers lost their lives. The rockfall sent mud, rocks and dirt flooding into Bondo, devastating parts of the village.

Anna Giacometti, a centre-right Radical-Liberal parliamentarian from canton Graubünden, in 2017. Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller

Today, Giacometti remembers the “huge outpouring of solidarity in Switzerland”. “It was such a comfort,” she says.

The day after the landslide, then Swiss president Doris Leuthard arrived by helicopter. With tears in her eyes, she hugged Giacometti. A photo of this moment adorns Giacometti’s wall at home.

‘We’ll manage’

They flew over the debris-covered Bondasca valley together – the president of the federal government, the mayor of Bondo and the president of canton Graubünden. Giacometti looked down with shock at the devastated village.

A huge mudslide hit the village Bondo in south Switzerland, on August 23, 2017. Keystone / Giancarlo Cattaneo

“Who will pay for all this?” she asked. The answer came from the president of the cantonal government. “Don’t think about that right now. We’ll manage.”

Whatever it takes. Bondo was eight years ago, in August 2017. The village has now been rebuilt. A total of CHF53 million francs ($64 million) was spent on protective structures – shoring up bridges, the main road, a roundabout.

Bondo in March 2025: new bridges and protection zones were built at a cost of CHF53 million. Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller

“Is all this proportionate for 200 inhabitants?” the Tages-AnzeigerExternal link newspaper asked in late May. Giacometti says: “These are questions from people who live in the lowlands or in a city. In Zurich, a bicycle underpass also costs CHF40 million.”

In Switzerland, a simple principle determines what is proportionate for protective structures: each franc invested must prevent one franc of potential damage.

The money always came from the valley

When prosperity came to Switzerland, it first arrived in the cities. Life in the countryside was modest; and in the mountains it was poor, tough and often very precarious.

Only with tourism in the 19th century did money start trickling into the mountain villages. And with the advent of electrification, some communities were able to cash in on their water power.

But the bulk of the development works – the infrastructure for schools, roads and hospitals – were an act of solidarity right from the start. The money came from the valley.

Since the founding of the federal state in 1848, Switzerland has pumped funds into the mountain cantons, in a process known as vertical financial equalisation.

With the increasing prosperity of the post-Second World War economic miracle, the country laid the foundations for a “solidarity transfer” between the rich and poorer cantons. This was enshrined in the Swiss constitution in 1959.

The cost of preserving mountain life

The inhabitants of mountainous areas thus do not see themselves as aid recipients but as legitimate beneficiaries. This is also because life there is, by nature, more difficult and more costly.

After all, at high altitude everything has its moods: the weather and the seasons, the streams and the avalanches, the animals and the plants. And the people even more so.

Although perhaps this is also a projection, like so much of what city dwellers think about mountain dwellers, and vice versa. People often regard each other as exotic. In any case, “the mountain does not discuss things,” as those who live with it say. It gives and it takes.

The stones come crashing down

Social Democrat parliamentarian Andrea Zryd. Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

Social Democrat parliamentarian Andrea Zryd grew up in the Alpine village of Adelboden, in canton Bern. She is a keen mountaineer and knows the mountains well. “They are changing,” she says. “Nowadays, small streams can suddenly rise up and flood everything.”

Mountain climbing, she explains, can be like standing on glass when it shows its first crack. It takes very little before something that was solid shatters into pieces. Then the stones come crashing down.

Zryd talks about that summer day in 2008 when she was on a mountain tour near Adelboden. The climbers took the normal route, nothing complicated. But a chunk of rockface broke loose. Her father was standing on it and was killed in the fall.

There is an emotional way of looking at mountain protection, Zryd says. “Mountain villages and their history are part of Swiss culture, and are therefore worth the effort of protecting them.”

Realistically though, she says, Switzerland will have to get used to the fact that some settlements will probably become uninhabitable. “Because it will be too dangerous.”

‘Nothing could have stopped this mountain’

In any case, it is the mountain that decides. In Blatten, says Michael Götte, a financial policy-maker from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, nothing humanly possible could have stopped the landslide. A “whatever-it-takes” approach does not impress a mountain.

>> Video of the glacier collapse in Blatten, canton Valais, on May 28, 2025.

Götte, who represents Switzerland’s most rural – and largest – party, also believes: “We will have to set priorities when it comes to protecting villages.”

But just how much does this protection cost? According to the Federal Office for the Environment, each year the federal government, cantons and municipalities devote around CHF400 million to protective structures. The amount actually needed, though, would be tenfold.

Over CHF3 billion a year

The first and so far only comprehensive analysisExternal link of the question in Switzerland was carried out in 2007. In their calculations, the authors of the study also took into account insurance premiums and reserves and the cost of fire departments, police and civil defence services as well as research. They set the total figure at CHF2.9 billion.

Adjusted for inflation, this would be CHF3.15 billion today – and the costs must have gone up. This is more money than agriculture receives in direct payments each year and more than Switzerland spends on development aid.

However, one week after the Blatten landslide, no one in the Swiss parliament would publicly say how money could be saved in protecting settlements.

In the parties’ programmes

On the contrary. The People’s Party now wants to redirect funds, allocating less to development aid and more to protective structures. The centre-right Radical-Liberal Party wants to tap into CO2 taxes, with less for subsidies for renovating private homes and more for shoring up mountain villages.

The Greens, meanwhile, want to use money from the national highway fund. This shows just how easily the Blatten disaster has been integrated into the different party programmes.

Solidarity in protecting the mountain settlements is clearly regulated from a technical point of view. “It is a joint task, the idea being that the federal government, the canton and the municipality each contribute one third of the costs,” explains Daniela Mangiarratti, information officer for natural hazards at the Federal Office for the Environment. So, basically, the federal government contributes 35% of the costs.

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter observes the damage caused by the huge glacier collapse in Blatten, canton Valais, Switzerland, May 30, 2025. Keystone / Jean-Christophe Bott

Small municipalities, however, are quickly overwhelmed by major events. Then the cantons or federal government can contribute more. “For large projects or above-average financial outlay, federal contributions are increased according to fixed rules,” says Mangiarratti.

Great solidarity with Blatten

There is much support for the people of Blatten today. At the start of the current parliamentary session, the president of the House of Representatives, Maja Riniker, called on her fellow members to donate one day’s allowance, that is CHF440, each.

The large cantons of Bern, Zurich and Graubünden are also contributing several hundred thousand francs in solidarity, while Lucerne is providing CHF1 million. Canton Valais is allocating CHF10 million to its buried community.

The Swiss population is also making generous donations. The authorities in the Lötschental valley have now asked people to stop sending in clothes. Their appeal at the weekend to refrain from travelling to the area was heeded and all planned trips to the disaster area have been cancelled.

>>Blatten before and after the landslide: on November 3, 2024, and May 29, 2025:

Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Adapted from German by Julia Bassam/sb