Nepal Highlights Disproportionate Climate Impacts and Infrastructure Resilience
Addressing the Kathmandu Climate Week-2026, Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal strongly urged the international community to translate climate justice into concrete action by providing Nepal with accessible, grant-based climate finance rather than treating it as a mere slogan. Highlighting that Nepal contributes a negligible 0.1 per cent to global greenhouse gas emissions yet suffers disproportionately from climate change impacts, Khanal pointed to recent devastation from Bhotekoshi floods and landslides, noting that recurring cycles of disaster rescue, rehabilitation, and infrastructure reconstruction create severe structural obstacles to the nation’s long-term development. To combat these mounting vulnerabilities, he called for robust international support directed toward climate adaptation, technology transfer, and institutional capacity building, while emphasizing that critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, transmission lines, and urban settlements must be engineered to withstand climate risks for decades. Furthermore, Khanal stressed the urgent need to convert scientific research regarding glacier melt into effective, community-level early-warning systems reaching remote farmers, urged that the Loss and Damage Fund be liberated from complex administrative bottlenecks, and advocated for enhanced scientific cooperation and data exchange with neighboring countries to protect shared river systems. Underscoring the Himalayas as the vital “Third Pole” supporting two billion downstream lives, Khanal announced the establishment of a dedicated Climate Diplomacy Section within Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to effectively bridge domestic grievances with global negotiations, ensuring that the nation’s advocacy at upcoming forums like COP-31 remains firmly grounded in community experiences, empirical science, and practical solutions.
