Nepal to use new flood study to claim millions from UN climate disaster fund — SkimNews
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- Nepal plans to claim around $20m (£15m) from the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, anchored on a new World Weather Attribution study that authorities say is "the main basis of our claim."
- The World Weather Attribution study found July and August temperatures in the region were about 1.5C (2.7F) warmer "due to human influence on the climate," and that climate change was a "destabilising factor acting on a pre-existing geological predisposition" in the rock-and-ice collapse at Langtang Lirung.
- The disaster killed around 1,400 people and left 6,150 still missing as of Wednesday, with floods and landslides wiping out thousands of houses and destroying energy infrastructure across the Nepal-Tibet border.
- Nearly 120 countries have already submitted claims to the fund totaling roughly $3bn (£2.2bn), but the fund reportedly has just under $400m (£300m) allotted for disbursement — a fraction of the ~$5bn (£3.7bn) Nepal says it needs to rebuild.
- Prime Minister Balendra Shah is set to make his first foreign trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week to press for climate-justice "compensation," framing the request around a polluter-pays model.
- UN fund officials are scheduled to meet in December to decide which requests to accept and whether to make an urgent decision for Nepal; some countries have stressed following procedures even as others push for faster disbursement.
- Glacier expert Dr Simon Cook of the University of Dundee called the report a "very worthwhile study" providing "strong evidence that climate change was a key factor," but said scientists "are not yet at a point of being able to say exactly how this happened."
Why it matters: The case exposes a structural mismatch: Nepal's estimated $5bn reconstruction need faces a UN fund holding under $400m, already oversubscribed by roughly $3bn in claims from 120 countries. The December fund board meeting becomes the first live test of whether the loss-and-damage mechanism — the centerpiece demand of vulnerable nations at COP27 — can actually disburse money at the speed of a humanitarian emergency.
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