Tanka Dhakal

IN HELAMBU, in Nepal’s mountainous Sindhupalchowk district, Dawa Lama Hyolmo, a 61-year-old farmer, was working on her steep, sloping, terraced field. She dug the soil, carefully mixed in compost as fertiliser, and planted potato sprouts. “Since there hasn’t been enough snowfall this year, I’m worried about how it will grow,” she said one early morning in March. “Last year, there wasn’t enough rainfall when the potato plants needed it.” Lama was referring to climate-change induced shifts in weather patterns and how they are affecting agricultural activities in the Himalayan foothills under Mount Dorje Lhakpa, where she lives.

The same concerns were echoed by António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, when he visited Nepal in October 2023. “We must put an end to the fossil-fuel age,” Guterres said from the heart of the Himalaya. “We must act now to protect the people on the frontline,” he urged, drawing attention to the dramatic retreat of glaciers across the Himalayan range. “We cannot retreat.”

The impacts of climate change are hitting mountain communities in Nepal hard, with clear evidence of increased burdens in high-altitude regions like Helambu due to the rapid melting of glaciers and more frequent climate-related hazards.

Guterres’ message applied not only to Nepal but also to other countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, including in Southasia. But as Nepal and other poor countries like it try to respond and adapt to the climate crisis, they depend on rich countries responsible for the vast majority of global carbon emissions to come through with financial and technological aid to help front-line groups. Climate action plans and targets set by the Nepal government, guided by scientific recommendations, often come with the caveat that they can only be achieved if international support arrives in time to protect vulnerable communities. “To achieve this, we need a strong presence in international forums with the power to negotiate,” Bimala Rai Paudyal, Nepal’s former foreign affairs minister, said. “We have to prioritise climate change in our diplomacy, or we can simply call it climate diplomacy.”

With rich countries and donor agencies prioritising climate change adaptation-related activities in Nepal, in 2021 the government and its development partners agreed to adopt a Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Development (GRID) approach to economic growth. According to a Country Climate and Development Report by the World Bank, without comprehensive and scaled-up climate action, Nepal’s gains in human development and poverty reduction will be jeopardised. Investments into strategies such as GRID aim to respond to such challenges.

One of Nepal’s major development partners, the United States, also recognises Nepal as a priority area for biodiversity conservation and reducing the adverse impacts of climate change. But there is still much progress to be made. Experts warn that the Nepal government’s presence and engagement in international forums such as the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) is still lacking, as is a more proactive approach to climate negotiations more generally.

A policy brief published in April 2022 by the Institute for Integrated Development Studies and the Nepal Institute for Policy Research recommends that climate change should be a critical part of Nepal’s diplomacy. It notes that Nepal’s foreign policy at the time “is a step in the right direction, but it requires extensive inter-ministerial coordination and policy coordination.” However, this has been missing for a long time, not only in climate diplomacy but in all diplomatic efforts within the government system. Rai Paudyal, who also represented Nepal in the Climate Parliament, a global network of legislators working to address the climate crisis, argued that the country’s existing diplomatic processes do not even recognise climate diplomacy as a major issue. “We need a dedicated body to work on climate and diplomacy, and we don’t have the willingness to create that body,” she added.

IT IS TRUE that within the government system in Nepal, there is no structural mechanism dedicated to addressing the climate crisis through bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. However, in recent years there has been growing interest in boosting regional and global climate action. This May, Nepal organised its first-ever International Expert Dialogue on Mountains, People and Climate. The event was organised in response to the Nepal prime minister’s pledge during the COP28 meeting in the UAE in 2023 to raise awareness on climate change and advance the agenda on adaptation and mitigation in mountain zones as part of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Over two hundred delegates from around the world gathered to urge international NGOs, development agencies and civil-society actors to collaborate on such mandates, and emphasised the importance of thinking beyond national borders to view the impact of climate change on mountain ecosystems and communities as a matter of regional and international concern. In addition to a call for financing mechanisms to support the needs of mountain countries, officials also encouraged engaging with local communities on decisions that affect them without expecting them to shoulder the burden of adaptation alone.

Guterres’ visit in 2023 was made possible by continuous efforts and lobbying by Nepali diplomatic missions abroad. According to Amrit Bahadur Rai, the joint secretary at the foreign ministry and a permanent representative of Nepal to the UN, the visit was the result of a multiyear effort by Nepal’s diplomatic mission to the UN and political coordination by the government. Bahadur Rai said Guterres’ “priority is climate change, and we told him, ‘Secretary-General, unless you visit a mountainous country and highlight the plight of mountain communities, climate messaging will not be complete. There will be no better country than Nepal.’ He agreed, and it happened.”

Officials recognise that Guterres’ call for action issued from the Himalaya will incentivise support for mountainous countries impacted by climate change. Buddi Sagar Poudel, who heads the climate change management division in Nepal’s ministry of forests and the environment, said, “His visit right before the UNFCCCs COP28 helped Nepal to present the mountain agenda strongly at the international gathering in the UAE last November.”

It has been years since Nepal began advocating for climate justice from the perspective of mountain countries. Almost 15 years ago, in December 2009, the government held a cabinet meeting at Everest Base Camp, at an altitude of over 5000 metres, to highlight the impact of climate change on the Himalaya. Headed by Madhav Kumar Nepal, the prime minister at the time, the meeting adopted a 10-point Everest Declaration and grabbed the attention of global media. “From there, our effort is ongoing,” Paudel added. “We are conveying our ground reality and trying to make our case.”

At COP28, Nepal had a dedicated platform for the first time to highlight issues related to climate and the community. Following the visit of the UN secretary-general, the prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, led the Nepali delegation at the conference and hosted a high-level roundtable meeting to discuss the agendas of mountainous countries. During an event organised by the Least Developed Countries, where Guterres was also present, Dahal said, “I strongly recommend the necessity of initiating a dialogue on mountain and climate change to realise the suffering of mountain communities and find workable solutions to bring them out of trouble.” He highlighted the worsening conditions in the mountains, reiterating, “Our message is clear: mountains are tortured by rising temperatures. Save them first!”

A recent report on the impact of climate change in the Hindu Kush region, published by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), warns that the changes to glaciers, snow and permafrost, all driven by global warming, are unprecedented and largely irreversible. The report finds that, based on current emissions trajectories, glaciers in this region could lose up to 80 percent of their current volume by the end of the century. It also calls for urgent actions to address such adverse effects.

Pema Gyamtsho, ICIMOD’s director general, said strong diplomacy is imperative for forging regional and global cooperation so as to secure vital resources and technological aid to mitigate these impacts and foster collaborative solutions that benefit not only one nation but the entire Himalayan region. “The region’s unique geography makes it particularly vulnerable to climate-induced disasters, from glacial melt to erratic weather patterns, undermining decades of development gains,” he stated. “We strive to ensure that the mountain agenda is heard, and that the world recognises the need for concerted action to protect these fragile ecosystems for the prosperity of billions downstream.”

Manjeet Dhakal, the head of the Least Developed Countries support team at Climate Analytics, a climate science and policy institute, said that Nepal’s growing presence on the global stage can make a difference in climate negotiations, “but we need to have a dedicated and informed team, for which we have to invest in our documentation and institutional memory.” However, preparatory groundwork and structural readiness is also essential.

To present a compelling case for support in global negotiations, Nepal not only has evidence of climate-induced migration in the Mustang region – as highlighted by the president of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow in 2021 – but also firsthand knowledge of adverse climate effects from frontline communities. And there are growing opportunities for collaboration – for example, the United States, as one of Nepal’s major development partners, is interested in working in the country’s climate change sector. Patrick S Gan, the regional environmental officer for Southasia at the US embassy in Nepal, said, “We continue to explore opportunities to highlight the importance of indigenous people’s knowledge in addressing climate change, as well as supporting indigenous peoples to have a greater voice in international climate change forums.”

DESPITE BEING ONE of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, Nepal lacks the power to negotiate for resources and technological support at international forums. Experts point out that the main reason for this is the country’s lack of documentation of extreme weather events, and the failure to use these in bilateral and multilateral negotiations as evidence in support of increased mitigation resources. “Very little progress has happened in documenting the climate crisis, although evidence is right in front of our doorsteps,” Rai Paudyal said. “Documentation needs to be done, but we don’t have it.” She pointed to the devastating flood on the Melamchi river in 2021, which resulted in more than twenty deaths and destroyed hundreds of homes. “It was a major event that we can showcase,” Rai Paudyel argued. “Documented evidence helps us to build our case and negotiation power not only in international forums but also in our collaboration with bilateral and development partners.”

Rai Paudyal claimed that, as the foreign minister, she tried to convince representatives of various developed countries as well as development partners such as the World Bank to visit Nepal and see the aftermath of the flood. “We don’t have negotiation power,” she rued. “I proposed that we need a dedicated desk for climate negotiation, which will engage in regular communication with missions. But it did not happen.” At the moment, “climate change is not even an issue of the ministry of foreign affairs. I strongly believe economic and climate diplomacy should be under the foreign ministry, where a dedicated body can work on climate and diplomacy.”

This weak negotiating power is evident in deals Nepal has made in international forums and multilateral-bilateral agreements. For instance, under the Emissions Reductions Payment Agreement, Nepal will receive USD 5 for every tonne of its reduced carbon emissions. According to the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices, achieving the landmark goals of the Paris Agreement requires a carbon price of USD 40 to 80 per tonne of carbon dioxide by 2020, and USD 50 to 100 by 2030.

In the Nepal government’s existing system, the ministry of forests and the environment oversees all climate change-related issues, working in collaboration with other ministries and agencies. Buddi Sagar Poudel argued that there should be a dedicated body to deal with climate negotiations. “We need a permanent negotiation team, which retains institutional memory and collaborates across ministries and agencies,” he said. “Our diplomatic missions are doing their part, but I do think we need climate diplomats in key missions like in the UN, the US and the UK.”

Amrit Bahadur Rai echoed the need for a dedicated body with expertise in climate change, diplomacy and negotiation. “As a climate-vulnerable country, we need resources and technological support, which comes from negotiation,” he explained. “As the chair of the Least Developed Countries expert group, now we are in a position to lead, but to do so we have to have a team in our system. Because we have to utilise each and every forum.”

Reflecting on his team’s efforts to facilitate Guterres’ visit to Nepal, Bahadur Rai said, “Climate diplomacy should be led by the ministry of foreign affairs in most countries. Because it’s not only a technical but also a diplomatic issue. Everything is related to climate or environment one way or another.”

Securing climate action funds through diplomatic channels is an uphill battle, and countries like Nepal are advocating to receive allocated funds that are not necessarily accessed only through competitive processes. Rai Paudyal, like other officials, urged the government to collaborate with outside experts to help make a unified case in every platform. “Our country is vulnerable, but no one is willing to pay easily,” she said. “However, there is international commitment. It’s not that easy to access that money. We are on one side, but the money is being channelled through a multilateral process, which is administratively challenging.” She added that “to access that requires a lot of groundwork at home and strong diplomacy at the international level. We need people who can sit at the table and negotiate.”

source : himalmag