Nepal’s prime minister calls for climate justice, proposes Himalayan resilience mechanism at UN

Balendra Shah says Nepal is paying ‘colossal price’ for crisis it did not create, urges regional climate cooperation with India and China.

Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah called for climate justice and proposed a new regional mechanism involving Nepal, India and China to confront growing climate risks across the Himalayas during his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday.

Addressing the 81st session of the General Assembly, Shah said last month’s catastrophic disaster involving a tsunami-like flash flood triggered by a massive high-altitude glacier collapse demonstrated how climate change was destabilizing Himalayan ecology through melting permafrost, unstable mountain slopes and growing risks of ice-rock avalanches, floods and landslides.

“We did not create this crisis, yet we are paying a colossal price for it,” he said, noting that Nepal contributes less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Aug. 26 disaster killed more than 1,400 people, while thousands remain missing, according to Nepali authorities. Recent assessments have put economic losses and physical damage at billions of dollars.

Shah proposed establishing a “Himalaya Climate Resilience Mechanism” led by Nepal, India and China to share satellite data and scientific expertise, monitor dangerous glacial lakes, strengthen cross-border early-warning systems and coordinate disaster assistance.

“Let the Himalayas become a laboratory of international cooperation rather than a frontier of fragmented information,” he said.

Shah also urged richer countries to provide greater grant-based climate financing, arguing that mechanisms such as the Loss and Damage Fund and Global Environment Facility remain inadequate.

“Climate justice cannot remain a beautiful phrase in United Nations documents,” he said.

Nepal has increasingly pushed climate justice to the center of its international diplomacy following the disaster, which devastated homes, roads, schools and hydropower infrastructure across several districts.

Shah said the international response should be built around six principles: “relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction” as well as “responsibility, reparation and resilience.”