Nepal is demanding “climate justice” and $20 million in compensation after recent devastating floods in the country and China’s Tibet region, which left thousands of people dead or missing. The catastrophe, which scientists say was caused by the effects of climate change, was triggered when part of a mountain glacier collapsed and a torrent of water and mud flooded the Rasuwa and Nuwakot regions of Nepal, as well as the Chinese region of Tibet on August 26. More than 1,300 people have been confirmed dead and more than 5,000 remain missing. List of 3 Item Recommended Storiesend of list“We are paying the ultimate price for a global crisis that we did not create,” Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said last week. “Support for Nepal should not be seen from the angle of aid or charity, but from the perspective of climate justice,” he told the AFP news agency. On Monday, the country’s president, Ramchandra Paudel, made “I sincerely appeal to the international community to not only listen to the voices of ecologically vulnerable countries, including Nepal, but also to take concrete and effective measures to ensure climate justice for them,” he said. Nepal’s Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Environment have written a joint letter to the United Nations, which created a fund to respond to loss and damage caused by climate change in 2022, in line with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, with a request for $20 million in damages. However, the UN Loss and Damage Fund faces a $2.8 billion funding gap as it prepares to approve its first climate recovery projects. ‘Collective frustration’ Nepal’s leaders may be right. Nepal contributes less than 0.1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and generates most of its electricity from renewable energy sources. However, its geographical location in the Himalayas makes it particularly vulnerable to severe climate and weather events. Last month’s catastrophic floods in the country come against a backdrop of rapid global warming and glacier loss across the Himalayas. Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, which span Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan, lost ice 65 percent faster between 2011 and 2020 than during the previous decade. The glaciers, which sit between two major carbon emitters (India and China), have lost about a third of their ice volume in about three decades due to global warming, the UN said in 2023. Tanuja Pandey, a lawyer and climate activist based in Nepal, said there is a collective frustration behind Nepal’s demand for climate justice. The headlines report thousands of people dead or missing and, in the end, their suffering does not create any urgency to fight climate change,” he told Al Jazeera. Shreya KC, a 28-year-old Nepalese climate activist, said there is deep anger and sadness among people in Nepal who say they should not continue to suffer the impact of climate change, for which, as they see it, other countries are responsible. “My hometown is in Solukhumbu, in eastern Nepal,” the activist told Al Jazeera. “It is a mountainous district and is also home to the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, and my home is also downstream. After the glacial collapse that occurred two weeks ago, people in my region have realized that this can happen now anywhere in Nepal, as the Himalayas are warming and glaciers are melting faster.” While Nepal has been actively fighting climate change, Shreya KC said she herself has been involved in projects in the country that focus on clean hydropower generation, forestry and other climate advocacy activities. “Because of other countries,” said, “Today Nepalis are the most affected by climate change. “That’s why people want justice.”[Planet Labs PBC]Is there something called ‘climate justice’? According to preliminary estimates by Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, property, housing and infrastructure losses in the country due to floods amount to about $2.56 billion. But claiming compensation under the concept of “climate justice” will not be easy, according to Joyeeta Gupta, professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam. According to the United Nations, “‘climate justice’ is the moral and ethical principle that seeks to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on vulnerable communities and future generations.” “I define it as a system of justice where the perspectives of others are taken into account and no harm is caused to others,” Gupta told Al Jazeera. Nepal is a very low-emissions country, he said, but it faces the brunt of climate problems it never created. “That is reason enough for Nepal to demand climate justice,” he said. But, in practice, can it be like that? In the period before 1990, there was much debate among nations about the need for large emitters to compensate those who would be harmed, Gupta said. But soon after, the term “offset” disappeared from the agenda of international climate treaties, which focused more on discussions about providing assistance to developing countries that need to address climate change. In a July 2025 climate change advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stated that “all nations have binding legal duties under international law to prevent significant climate harm.” ‘There is no climate justice without domestic justice’ Nepali rapper-turned-prime minister Balendra Shah is scheduled to travel to New York on September 22 to address the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. (UNGA) on September 24. His country’s call for climate justice is expected to be a key part of his speech. For climate activist Shreya KC, while UN meetings and international conferences on climate change may have some weight when it comes to discussing climate disasters, right now what Nepal needs is money. money to the UN Loss and Damage Fund,” he said, adding that money from that fund should be disbursed to vulnerable communities in need, not as a loan but as compensation for bearing the brunt of climate change. Pandey noted that this is not the first time a climate disaster has occurred in Nepal and said the new government, which came to power in March this year following the Generation Z protests in Nepal last year, has also failed to make climate a priority in its budget. While it is a good signal that Nepali politicians are appealing to international climate justice, he said, and also need to address the country’s domestic development model for fighting climate change in the first place. “There is no climate justice without internal justice within the country itself,” he said. “I hope that even in our development, partners and investors will stop treating climate resilience as an optional addition to development in Nepal just because we are economically vulnerable. “Investing in Nepal without investing in sustainability is simply a bad investment.” On Monday, Nepal declared a national day of mourning to remember the more than 1,300 people known to have died in last month’s catastrophic floods. Thousands more remain missing. The country’s president, Paudel, took the opportunity to ask people to unite. “This is not a time for division. Nor is it a time to blame each other or to get involved in political disputes and confrontations,” he said. “This is a time to demonstrate national unity and solidarity. It is also a time for reconstruction, rehabilitation and economic recovery.” But Gupta says Nepal’s biggest challenge right now is setting a precedent for compensation for climate change-related disasters. “There was a glacial collapse in the country recently, but it will soon become a bigger problem as time goes by because the monsoon patterns will change and the sea level will rise,” he said. enormous. “That will be a very important reason why many rich countries will probably not be willing to pay compensation, because that would set a precedent for future problems,” Gupta said. “But the problems facing countries like Nepal are a very strong argument to try to convince the entire world to accelerate action to phase out fossil fuels and fight climate change.”
