Even as rescuers search for the thousands still missing in Nepal after catastrophic flooding that killed 1,250 people, the nation’s leaders face a second immense challenge — how to pay for recovery and rebuilding. The tab is expected to come to at least $5 billion, an enormous sum for one of Asia’s poorest countries, and the fund it’s hoping to tap is new, underfunded and untested. Nepal is seeking compensation for climate change-related damages from a United Nations fund set up to help developing nations deal with the worst impacts of global warming.
On Sept. 1, the country sent a letter to the fund’s co-chairs asking for immediate support and arguing that the international community’s promises “must move from commitments on paper to concrete action on the ground,” Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal told reporters last week. The letter did not quantify the losses or specify how much money the nation was requesting. The United Nations Fund for responding to Loss and Damage emerged from annual global climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022.
It was intended to help address a central injustice of climate change: Developed countries, which became rich by taking advantage of fossil fuels, contributed the most to the problem, while poor countries that have emitted far less are the most likely to suffer the impacts of warming and are often the least prepared. The precise role climate change played in the Aug. 26 disaster isn’t yet fully established. But the Himalayas are highly vulnerable to warming, as permafrost and glaciers thaw, rendering rock, soil and ice unstable.
Climate-linked disasters such as glacial-lake floods have become more frequent in recent decades. Disasters like the one in Nepal are “precisely the kind of climate-related extreme weather events the fund was established to address,” members and alternate members of the fund’s board said in an open letter dated Sept. 2. The board members called for an extraordinary meeting of the fund to evaluate Nepal’s case.
Nepal’s environment ministry and the U.N. fund didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The concern of climate advocacy groups is that the fund lacks the resources and capacity to act quickly and at sufficient scale. The little-known body, which was fully established in 2024, closed its initial round for funding requests in June and isn’t scheduled to convene again until December.
Even if it does meet imminently, Nepal’s needs dwarf the resources it has on hand. The fund has received pledges of more than $822 million from 27 nations or other partners, but the total of paid contributions so far stands at around $485 million, according to data published by the fund and the World Bank Group. The World Bank currently hosts the fund.
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