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Nepal to Seek $20m From UN Climate Fund After Deadly Floods

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Nepal will use a new World Weather Attribution study linking climate change to last month's border floods to claim around $20m from a UN loss and damage fund.

Nepal intends to build a financial claim to a United Nations climate fund on a newly published study that ties last month's catastrophic border floods to a warming planet. Officials say the country hopes to secure roughly $20m (£15m) from the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, which supports nations harmed by climate impacts.

The disaster on the Nepal-Tibet frontier has killed around 1,400 people, with a further 6,150 still unaccounted for as of Wednesday, according to official figures. Torrents of water and debris tore through settlements on both sides of the border, flattening thousands of homes and knocking out energy infrastructure.

The research, released on Thursday by the group World Weather Attribution, concluded that a warming climate was a probable contributor to the surge of rock and ice that set off the floods. "There was absolutely no doubt that human-induced climate change played a role here in the preconditioning of the disaster," said Dr Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London who helped write the report.

Scientists trace the event to a failure of rock and glacial ice high on Langtang Lirung, a Himalayan peak on the Nepali side of the range. The study frames the catastrophe as a "compound event" produced by several overlapping pressures: climbing temperatures, glaciers losing mass, permafrost thawing and long-standing fractures in the mountain's geology.

What the study found

According to the analysis, human influence on the climate pushed July and August temperatures in the area about 1.5C (2.7F) higher than they would otherwise have been. Glaciers across the region have also been losing roughly half a metre (1.6ft) of thickness each year, a decline that can widen existing cracks and make the ice less stable.

The researchers noted that unusually heavy snowfall the previous October and November left large volumes of meltwater in the system by early this year. The report described the warming climate as a "destabilising factor acting on a pre-existing geological predisposition," stressing that it was one driver among several rather than the sole cause.

Building the claim

Nepal's government has estimated it will need in the region of $5bn (£3.7bn) to recover and rebuild after the floods. The UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, which only began operating last year, asks applicant countries to demonstrate with evidence that their losses stemmed from climate change.

Officials in Kathmandu had already been assembling satellite and drone imagery alongside early assessment reports to support their case. Authorities now regard the World Weather Attribution findings as the most compelling proof that a changing climate drove the collapse of rock and ice at Langtang Lirung.

"[The report] will be the main basis of our claim as it has detailed what role climate has played in this disaster," said Maheshwar Dhakal, a spokesperson for Nepal's Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment.

Nepali leaders have pressed for stronger international action on climate change, arguing that their country ranks among the smallest sources of greenhouse gas emissions while remaining acutely exposed to the consequences of global warming. Prime Minister Balendra Shah is scheduled to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, marking his first overseas trip since taking office.

Nepal floods, UN loss and damage fund, World Weather Attribution, climate change Himalayas, Langtang Lirung, Nepal Tibet disaster, glacier collapse, Balendra Shah

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