Nepal is demanding climate compensation from the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases after deadly floods in the country killed more than a thousand people and left nearly 4,000 missing.
China, the US and India have made “extremely large” contributions to climate change and left smaller nations “enduring the price of it,” Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal told Kantipur TV, excerpts of which were published by The Kathmandu Post on Tuesday.
“Nepal must hold its head high internationally and turn this into a matter of justice. We will raise this matter explicitly and forcefully on international platforms. This is not a matter of charity; it is a matter of legal and moral liability,” he said.
Khanal also warned that the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers could threaten the water security of more than two billion people in South Asia who depend on rivers originating in the region.
Meanwhile, Nepal has formally approached the board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, seeking urgent financial assistance following the devastating flash flood in the Bhotekoshi River basin on August 26.
The fund was established at the UN climate conference COP27 in 2022 and operationalised at COP28.
A joint letter from Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle and Forests and Agriculture Minister Geeta Chaudhary called for an urgent response to the disaster, which caused deaths, displacement and extensive damage to homes and critical infrastructure.
The ministers said the full extent of the economic and non-economic losses had yet to be assessed, but preliminary information indicated that the damage was extensive and beyond Nepal’s immediate capacity to respond.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah said yesterday that Nepal must press the international community to recognise the growing toll of climate change on the Himalayas.
Addressing the House of Representatives, Shah said the scale of the disaster had raised a deeper question about why such an extreme event had struck the region. He said that Nepal needed to bring the climate-related risks facing the Himalayan region to the international community with greater urgency.
The demands come ahead of the United Nations’ annual climate summit in November, where developing nations are expected to press wealthier, high-emitting countries for more funding to cover climate-related losses and damage.
“Nepal cannot reduce the world’s emissions on behalf of the polluters. It cannot protect the Himalayas through adaptation alone while the world continues to burn more fossil fuels,” the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, a civil society coalition of 200 international groups, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Source: https://www.thedailystar.net/news/world/south-asia/news/deadly-flash-floods-nepal-demands-compensation-us-china-india-4263626
