The true extent of the glacial calamity in Nepal is still unfolding to a world watching in horror. While rescue teams have succeeded in finding some people who survived miraculously, it is clear that the consequences are going to be of an apocalyptic scale. Over 1,300 people have died, and thousands remain missing. Entire towns and villages have been lost. Tens of thousands are homeless with winter coming in a few months. Just rebuilding the basic infrastructure and coping with immediate impacts is estimated to cost $5 billion, which is 10% of the entire national economy of Nepal.
The burden cannot be Nepal’s alone. This was a textbook climate change disaster. The glacial collapse in the Himalayas and the resulting flash floods constitute indisputable evidence of global warming. No local cause triggered the disaster; no local effort will mitigate its aftermath.
It is entirely justifiable, therefore, that Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shishir Khanal is making a case for his country to be compensated for this disaster, upholding the principle of global accountability for global warming. Khanal is arguing that the world’s three biggest greenhouse gas emitters — China, the US, and India — have a ‘moral liability’ for the devastation caused by the flash floods. Indeed, the three countries account for 50% of the total global emissions annually. Even if one took a historical reckoning of emissions since 1850, these three countries would rank, together with the European Union, at the top of the table. Compared to them, Nepal’s share of emissions would be negligible. Why, Khanal asks, must Nepal bear the consequences of a calamity it had no part in precipitating?
Khanal has clarified that his intent is not to target specific nations but to lay down the principle of global climate liability. The irrefutable evidence emerging from the glacial collapse in the Himalayas should drive home a point developing nations have been making for decades: that climate change finance is not charity vulnerable countries are seeking but an emergency imperative for the whole world. A humanitarian approach is not an adequate response to the consequences of global warming.
Nepal has formally applied to the UN-backed Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage for urgent financial assistance for its reconstruction and resettlement. But the financial mechanisms for climate change mitigation and adaptation are still in a nascent stage. The UN Fund came into being only four years ago at COP27 in Egypt, and funding arrangements were given effect in 2023.
As a country that has long argued the Global South’s case for the developed world to shoulder the burden of climate finance, India should welcome Nepal’s effort to secure global funding for its recovery programme. New Delhi must not hide behind the ruse that it is not among the biggest emitters in terms of per capita emissions. It must instead give greater weightage to the fact that it lies downstream of Nepal, and any upstream initiative to address the effects of melting Himalayan glaciers would serve its own interests as well. Climate change impacts in the Himalayas would inevitably have consequences for India’s main river basins and several states in north India. It’s imperative, therefore, for India to see Nepal’s current plight in a broader South Asian perspective. As Khanal said, this is a civilisational issue for the two billion people living in South Asia.