Prime Minister Balendra Shah’s address to the United Nations makes a legitimate case for climate justice, grant-based recovery and stronger Himalayan cooperation. Recent scientific evidence supports important parts of his warning. Yet the speech also invites a second reading from within Nepal.
If the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli disaster is evidence of a changing Himalayan climate, it is also evidence of how settlements, infrastructure, institutions and development decisions shape the consequences of that climate. The speech therefore raises a question that goes beyond international responsibility. Can Nepal seek more integrated regional climate action while climate science, disaster-risk institutions, spatial planning and infrastructure decisions at home remain only partially connected?
The concerns of a vulnerable country
Prime Minister Balendra Shah spoke at the United Nations General Assembly while the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli disaster was still painfully fresh in Nepal’s collective memory. His speech moved from lives lost, missing family members and destroyed infrastructure to a larger argument about climate justice. He noted Nepal’s negligible contribution to global greenhouse-gas emissions, the instability of Himalayan systems and the repeated destruction of roads, bridges, schools, homes, farms and clean-energy infrastructure. He also argued that a poor country should not have to repeatedly borrow to rebuild losses from a crisis to which it contributed little.
There is considerable evidence behind this position. The World Bank has warned that Nepal’s economy could be at least 7 percent smaller by 2050 under severe climate impacts if effective action is not taken. Nepal’s Third Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC 3.0, similarly recognises that adaptation cannot eliminate all climate risks and includes loss and damage, resilience and international climate finance within its policy framework. The Prime Minister’s demand for international responsibility should therefore not be dismissed as a post-disaster emotional appeal.
Yet the speech makes another statement that deserves equal attention. Nepal, the Prime Minister argued, must move from ad hoc response towards preparedness, stronger infrastructure and institutions, early-warning systems and resilience. This is where the international argument meets domestic development practice. Climate change can alter the probability or severity of a hazard, but it does not decide where a road, hydropower project, settlement, dry port or other major infrastructure is located. Climate injustice and domestically produced risk can therefore coexist.
Climate change matters, but disaster causation remains more complex
The Prime Minister argued that warming is destabilising the Himalaya through glacier retreat, permafrost degradation and increasingly unstable mountain slopes. A World Weather Attribution assessment supports important parts of this warning. It concluded that warming and degrading permafrost likely contributed to weakening the source rock wall at Langtang Lirung. Human-induced climate change was estimated to have increased July and August temperatures near the failure site by about 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with a pre-industrial climate.
The same study, however, does not reduce the disaster to climate change alone. Geological conditions remained fundamental, while the 2015 earthquake may have contributed to longer-term instability. The researchers explicitly state that they did not determine whether this particular rock-ice avalanche would have occurred without human-induced climate change. Climate change therefore belongs within the chain of causation, but it cannot replace all other explanations.
More important for planning is the study’s conclusion about exposure. Immediate impacts were almost entirely dependent on what lay in the hazard path. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, or ICIMOD, similarly describes how limited flatter terrain around Rasuwagadhi accommodated the Friendship Bridge, customs yard, dry port, truck park and hydropower works. These developed areas were in the flood path.
This does not mean that Nepal can withdraw development from Himalayan valleys. In a mountainous country, such locations are often among the few feasible places for transport, trade, settlements and energy infrastructure. The planning question is how to distinguish unavoidable exposure from exposure unnecessarily increased through development decisions. Kathleen Tierney’s work on the social roots of risk is useful here because it shifts attention from disaster as a physical event towards the institutional, economic and political processes operating before the event. A warning about a river or unstable slope has limited preventive value if it enters the planning system after buildings, roads and infrastructure have already been located.
Policy exists, but risk has not fully entered spatial development
Nepal does not lack legislation for risk-sensitive development. The Local Government Operation Act gives local governments substantial responsibilities for land use, settlement development, building regulation and local planning. It specifically requires land-use standards to consider geo-risk sensitivity and allows building approval only within those standards. The problem is whether these legally grounded responsibilities consistently become enforceable, risk-informed spatial development decisions.
Current urban programmes illustrate both progress and the remaining institutional gap. The Asian Development Bank-supported Urban Resilience and Livability Improvement Project cover seven municipalities, including Pokhara Metropolitan City, and is helping strengthen risk-sensitive and low-carbon urban planning. One of its institutional outputs is the preparation of decarbonisation and risk-sensitive urban development plans, together with stronger enforcement of development control.
The fact that a major current urban programme is explicitly investing in the preparation and operationalisation of such plans also suggests that these approaches have not yet become routine development practice across urban Nepal. The project is therefore important not only for what it delivers in participating municipalities, but also for what it reveals about the wider need to mainstream risk-sensitive spatial planning within Nepal’s urban development system.
This should now be a central concern of the Ministry of Infrastructure Development, the renamed former Ministry of Urban Development, together with the Department of Urban Development and Building Construction and local governments. The question is not simply whether municipalities possess annual plans, building-permit systems or land-use classifications. It is whether they have an integrated spatial framework in which multi-hazard information influences where settlement growth, infrastructure, densities and major public investment should occur before development becomes difficult to reverse.
The Nepal Disaster Report 2024 reveals a related contradiction. All 753 local governments have laws or policies on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management, or DRRM. More than 400 operate Local Emergency Operation Centres and 419 have prepared Local Disaster and Climate Resilience Plans. Yet the same report acknowledges continuing limitations in coordination, research, education and financing. More significantly, it notes that DRRM financing remains secondary to development expenditure, particularly infrastructure development.
This is more than a conventional implementation gap. It points to an institutional separation between organisations expected to reduce risk and those whose decisions can create future exposure. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, or NDRRMA, coordinates disaster-risk management under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, or DHM, under the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, generates hydrological, meteorological, glaciological and early-warning information. National climate-change coordination is centred in the Climate Change Management Division of the Ministry of Forests and Environment. Settlement planning, building regulation and much of urban infrastructure are institutionally located elsewhere again.
Specialisation itself is not the problem. The test is whether knowledge produced in one institution changes decisions taken in another. A flood forecast produced by DHM is not a land-use decision. A climate vulnerability assessment does not determine where a municipality permits urban expansion. NDRRMA does not select every road alignment or infrastructure investment. Sumit Vij and colleagues have shown how response, disaster-risk management, climate adaptation and federalised disaster-governance paradigms continue to coexist in Nepal. More recent research led by Anshu Ogra, examining DHM and the Department of Mines and Geology, shows how institutional and disciplinary structures shape what knowledge is produced and how it enters policy.
The implication extends beyond the organisation of scientific departments. A disaster such as Bhotekoshi passes simultaneously through hydrology, geology, land use, settlement, infrastructure, energy, social vulnerability and emergency management. Yet these dimensions do not pass through a single institutional chain. Greater scientific capacity is necessary, but so is a system through which different forms of knowledge can influence development before risk becomes fixed into the landscape.
Climate policy and the geography of exposure
The administrative location of climate change within the Ministry of Forests and Environment requires careful interpretation. Its Climate Change Management Division is formally a national nodal body with a mandate to coordinate federal ministries, provinces and municipalities and to mainstream climate change into development planning. It would therefore be inaccurate to suggest that Nepal’s climate policy is concerned only with forests.
At the same time, institutional location can influence how a problem is framed and operationalised. Much of the exposure revealed by recent disasters lies in settlements, roads, hydropower facilities, trade infrastructure and expanding urban areas. Climate adaptation therefore has to be equally embedded within the institutions that determine where these systems are built. Climate change cannot remain an environmental consideration added to sectoral development after major spatial and investment decisions have already been taken.
Nepal’s National Adaptation Plan 2021-2050 recognises this problem more clearly than is sometimes assumed. Its programmes for rural and urban settlements include integrated settlement and urbanisation models for climate-risk reduction, climate-resilient building practices and physical development plans based on geographic information systems and hazard mapping. It also includes programmes for industry, transport and physical infrastructure. The issue is therefore not policy neglect. It is the uneven translation of national adaptation intentions into municipal spatial plans, capital investment decisions and enforceable development controls.
This is where the Ministry of Infrastructure Development needs a stronger integrative role. Climate policy does not need to be transferred away from the Ministry of Forests and Environment. Rather, adaptation has to become as firmly institutionalised within spatial and infrastructure planning as it is within environmental policy and climate reporting. Otherwise, human settlements may continue to appear in climate documents as an adaptation sector while decisions that create future exposure remain only weakly connected to the climate-governance system.
Climate duty and the consequences of development
The Prime Minister’s speech also places climate justice within a wider argument about development and a fairer international order. Nepal’s climate commitments can be viewed through two ethical perspectives. From a deontological, or duty-based, perspective, Nepal should conserve forests, reduce emissions, promote renewable energy and honour the climate commitments it has voluntarily undertaken because these actions are environmentally responsible in themselves. A country asking historical emitters to meet their responsibilities also strengthens its position by taking its own commitments seriously.
A teleological, or consequence-based, perspective asks another question. What do those commitments actually produce for Nepalese society and the economy? Do they increase employment, productive capacity, energy security and resilience? Who bears the costs of transition, and who receives the benefits? These questions matter because Nepal still faces substantial development deficits and must expand infrastructure, employment, productive capacity and reliable energy while pursuing a low-carbon transition.
NDC 3.0 makes this tension visible. Nepal estimates that meeting quantified mitigation targets through 2035 will require about USD 73.74 billion, with about USD 62.92 billion, or 85 percent, expected from international climate finance. Around 96 to 97 percent of targeted emission reductions are conditional on international support. These are nationally determined commitments rather than externally imposed development limits, but their implementation depends heavily on a financial architecture Nepal does not control.
Hydropower illustrates the same tension. Nepal needs electricity for domestic consumption, industry, electrified transport and regional trade. At the same time, research across 12 run-of-river hydropower sites in the Gandaki basin has shown how projects serving national sustainable-development objectives can produce uneven local social and political consequences. A project can therefore be low-carbon without automatically being socially just or physically resilient.
Climate finance, forests and social value
The Prime Minister defines climate justice not only through responsibility between countries but also through distributive justice, concerning who bears the costs, and procedural justice, concerning who has a voice. That distinction is equally useful within Nepal.
In November 2025, Nepal received USD 9.4 million from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility for approximately 1.88 million tonnes of verified emission reductions under the REDD+ Emission Reductions Program in the Terai Arc Landscape. REDD+ refers to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, together with conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. This creates a genuine opportunity to attach economic value to forest conservation.
A forest, however, is not only a carbon stock. It also supports fuel, fodder, livelihoods, identity, community institutions and social relations. Research led by Poshendra Satyal on Nepal’s REDD+ pilots found gains in recognition and empowerment but continuing problems of distributive, procedural and recognition justice across caste, gender, ethnicity, class and location. A 2024 study led by Hari Prasad Pandey also reported poor overall understanding of REDD+ among local stakeholders at about 29 percent.
This does not make carbon finance undesirable. It shows why carbon value and social value cannot be assumed to be identical. The Prime Minister’s own definition of climate justice therefore provides a useful standard for examining Nepal’s domestic climate transition.
International climate commitments under strain
The Prime Minister’s appeal is directed at an international climate system that is itself becoming less predictable. In January 2026, the United States moved to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and immediately withdrew from the Green Climate Fund, following its renewed withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. For Nepal, the significance lies less in American domestic politics than in the asymmetry this creates. Vulnerable countries are expected to strengthen mitigation targets, reporting and adaptation systems while part of the international architecture expected to mobilise collective responsibility and finance is becoming less stable.
The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage illustrates the scale problem. Its Barbados Implementation Modalities initially allocated USD 250 million for the 2025-2026 start-up period and have since been increased to USD 342 million, with at least half reserved for Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. Such finance is important, but remains modest compared with the scale of climate-related losses faced by vulnerable countries. The Prime Minister’s call for grant-based support therefore addresses a genuine structural constraint.
Regional cooperation also requires integration at home
One of the more constructive parts of the speech is the proposal for a Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism led by Nepal, India and China. The Prime Minister proposed sharing satellite information and expertise, monitoring dangerous glacial lakes, strengthening joint early-warning systems and coordinating cross-border disaster assistance. The physical logic is clear because Himalayan hazards do not stop at national boundaries.
ICIMOD already provides a regional platform linking eight Hindu Kush Himalayan countries, including Nepal, India and China. A new trilateral mechanism would therefore need to clarify the institutional gap it intends to fill and how it would complement existing arrangements.
The proposal also raises an important question at home. Satellite information received from another country still has to move through Nepal’s own institutional system. It must reach DHM, disaster authorities, sectoral ministries, provincial governments and municipalities, and eventually influence land-use regulation, infrastructure design and settlement development. Regional integration cannot compensate for weak domestic integration. The value of a cross-border warning is ultimately determined by whether it changes a decision on the ground.
From climate justice to development practice
The Prime Minister’s six words, “Relief, Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Responsibility, Reparation, Resilience”, deliberately shift the discussion from humanitarian response towards responsibility. The term “reparation”, however, is politically and ethically stronger than the present legal architecture of the Paris Agreement. Decision 1/CP.21 states that Article 8 on loss and damage does not provide a basis for liability or compensation. Reparation in the speech is therefore better understood as a normative and political claim for climate justice rather than an existing legal entitlement within the Paris framework.
That distinction does not weaken Nepal’s argument. It clarifies the different levels at which responsibility operates. Global emissions influence climatic hazards. National institutions shape development choices. Provincial and local governments influence land, settlement and infrastructure. Markets distribute costs and benefits. Social structures influence who is most exposed and who has the capacity to recover.
The central challenge raised by the speech is therefore not only whether the international community accepts responsibility for climate loss. It is whether Nepal can connect climate science, spatial planning, infrastructure investment, disaster governance and social justice before risk becomes loss.
The Prime Minister was right to present the Himalayan disaster as a warning to the international community. The same warning asks Nepal whether the institutional integration it proposes across international borders is sufficiently developed within its own borders. If that question remains relevant after the immediacy of Bhotekoshi fades, the speech may achieve something more than bringing Nepal’s tragedy before the United Nations. It may help move climate justice from a claim made abroad towards a principle through which development itself is examined at home.
