On 26 August 2026, a glacial disaster high in the Himalayas sent a wall of meltwater and debris tearing through Nepal’s Bhotekoshi and Rasuwa region at speeds of nearly 188 km per hour. The flood has claimed over 1400 lives, with thousands still missing.
Nepal is experiencing the consequences of a warming cryosphere, with accelerated glacier melt that could undermine the long-term security of a water source on which millions of people depend.
The country only contributes around 0.1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet its people are on the front lines of climate change impacts, as glacial retreat reshapes the Himalayan landscape. Early estimates of the cost of reconstruction are $4 to 5 billion, around a tenth of Nepal’s GDP.
Nepal’s government has appealed to the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) for help. But that can only provide a fraction of the funds required. As a result, Nepal has raised the responsibility of the world’s largest carbon emitters and will bring the issue to the forefront of November’s COP31 climate summit in Turkey.
In this respect, Nepal’s recovery will stress-test bigger questions: How far is it possible to establish whether climate change was a contributing factor to a disaster? Can international climate finance mechanisms deliver urgent help to countries facing imminent, irreparable losses? And what more should the world’s greatest emitters be doing to help countries like Nepal?
The Fund faces a credibility test
Since the FRLD was established at COP27 in 2022, demand for financial support has far exceeded available funding. As of March 2026, 27 countries pledged $822.06 million, of which only around half was received. The Fund made $342 million available in its first round, dwarfed by requests of close to $2.8 billion for losses and damages worldwide.
The Fund faces disbursement delays from unreliable capital flows and institutional bottlenecks, due to unfulfilled voluntary commitments and approval processes within the World Bank. Nepal’s access is also constrained by complex, multi-tiered federal approval processes and lengthy procurement procedures.
At present, there is no rapid-access pathway for countries to apply for FRLD funding outside scheduled application windows. Questions also remain about how the Fund will assess the role of climate change in causing particular disasters, and how such assessments might influence funding decisions.
Nepal has emerged as an early test of how the Fund will respond. Kathmandu has requested $20 million – a modest sum compared to the scale of economic damage. Yet the request is significant for what it reveals about the Fund’s ability to respond in practice: Can the Fund move resources quickly and predictably enough to provide support when it is most needed?
Scientific attribution
Nepal’s catastrophe puts attribution front and centre: how can it be established whether climate change was a contributing factor to a disaster, rather than the sole cause? If it is found to be a contributing factor, when is that sufficient to establish harm? And is it possible to apportion responsibility for global warming to greenhouse gas emissions by certain countries?
Nepal is relying on a recent flood study in its claim to the Fund, attributing several cascading climate factors to the onset of this catastrophe. This should make Nepal’s case for loss and damage straightforward. The harm is tangible, the science exists, and the FRLD was built for this scenario. But a fund capped at $20 million per project is facing a disaster impact estimated in billions. That may push Nepal to look past the Fund’s limits to the countries whose emissions may have contributed to these harms.
In July 2025, the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change offered a real, if partial, legal scaffolding to claims that states suffering climate-related harm may seek address, a development relevant to Nepal’s application to the FRLD. On establishing harm, the Court accepted that climate science can be relied upon to link specific disasters to climate change. A ‘sufficiently direct and certain’ standard was set to accommodate the complexity of determining causality in climate events.
Responding to losses and damages
Speaking at the UN General Assembly last Friday, Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah argued that the FRLD and other mechanisms remain ‘grossly inadequate’ for countries like his, which contributed little to warming of the Himalayan climate. This followed calls by his foreign minister for major emitters to work together to help vulnerable and small economies like Nepal.
By seeking support from major emitters across developed and developing countries, Nepal is challenging established understandings of climate responsibility and raising difficult questions about who should bear the costs of climate-related losses.
Though politically significant, translating that into an international financing obligation will be difficult. While China and India’s present-day emissions are substantial, India’s per capita emissions and both their historical contributions are low relative to other advanced economies.
Both are considered developing countries under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and argue for differentiated responsibilities to developed countries like the United States under Article 2 (2) of the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, the US withdrawal from UNFCCC creates financial, governance and diplomatic challenges ahead of COP31.
However, both China and India have significant interests in Nepalese recovery. Both invest heavily in infrastructure development in the ecologically fragile region, while India relies on Nepal’s hydropower. And both countries’ proximity to Nepal creates shared priorities in Himalayan resilience.
Furthermore, their responsibilities to address climate change can evolve as domestic capabilities and emission profiles grow, also helping to strengthen south-south cooperation. Addressing Nepal’s losses and damages therefore provides a strategic and humanitarian imperative, requiring a collective response to rebuild Nepal.
COP31: The next test
Questions of attribution and compensation are best left outside of negotiation rooms to appropriate legal forums. Instead, Nepal’s experience points to three priorities at this year’s COP31 summit. First, clearer standards are needed for attributing harm where multiple factors have contributed to a disaster. Second, more consistent approaches are required for establishing the value of economic and non-economic losses in cases like Nepal’s. Third, access to FRLD finance should be faster and more predictable.
The political context will make progress difficult. COP31 comes amid geopolitical fragmentation, fiscal pressures and growing strain on multilateral cooperation. At the same time, some progress may be in sight. Loss and damage is formally on the agenda, including guidance to the FRLD, while the Fund prepares for its first funding decisions. Some scope for regional cooperation may remain, as illustrated by Prime Minister Shah’s proposal at the UN for a Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism between Nepal, India and China to share glacial-lake data and strengthen joint early-warning systems.
Overall, Nepal’s application will provide a practical test of whether COP31 can move beyond broad commitments on loss and damage towards clearer rules for climate attribution, assessment and access to finance. The immediate opportunity may be incremental rather than transformational. Negotiators will need to establish processes that can be strengthened over time, while ensuring that disputes over responsibility do not prevent vulnerable countries receiving the support they need. However, more cases like Nepal’s will follow. And the need for a just solution to help countries recover from such disasters will only grow.