Climate Justice
When glacial ice sheared off the mountains in northern Nepal, it did not just cause a destructive flash flood but also exposed the truth that we have collectively not prioritised, which is that we have reached a breaking point in our environment from where we cannot turn back.
The disaster in the Bhotekoshi River has left more than 1400 dead, over 5000 missing and caused billions in damages. However, experts at World Weather Attribution remark that no amount of local adaptation could have fully shielded vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction. The collapse was triggered by an alarming rate of increase in global warming. Nepal’s plight is a preview of a broad global injustice where nations that contributed virtually nothing to global emissions are bearing the cost of planetary warming.
Nepal has served as an exemplary environmental steward as we have restored our forest cover to nearly 45 per cent, allocated around 23 per cent of land as protected reserves, and have consistently used renewable hydroelectricity as a primary means of running our power grid. Despite contributing less than 0.1 per cent to the world’s carbon emissions, thousands of people got affected by the negligence of high-emitting nations towards climate change.
Beyond the immediate loss of life and destroyed infrastructure, the recent flood has unleashed a cross-border environmental crisis through sewage and waste management. The waters have brought huge chunks of debris, chemicals, waste and toxins into the river system. As the floods originated from the Nepal-China border and the Bhotekoshi River feeds into transboundary river networks flowing downstream to India, this ecological disaster has become a regional hazard.
This cascade underscores the critical need to manage the waste through disaster response protocols and shared cross-border systems to prevent major health problems and possible public health emergencies that may emerge from the toxic sludge and waterborne pathogens that extend across international borders.
Climate justice is a moral and political framework that views the climate crisis as a human rights and ethics issue rather than solely an environmental problem. It requires abandoning the patronising framework of providing charity and taking accountability for their contribution to a phenomenon that is hazardous for the world. Furthermore, Nepal’s request for USD 20 million from the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage did not align with current rules, depicting the harsh realities of emergency allocations and funding for climate catastrophes, especially in developing countries.
Climate justice entails major policy shifts in a global context. There is a false premise that climate adaptation can infinitely cushion vulnerable nations against global warming. The flood is a clear example of how atmospheric warming has now transcended the physical thresholds of human settlement, and a just global climate framework must ensure that legally binding mechanisms are established that deliver both appropriate compensation and aid to nations that have faced disasters as a result of climate change and global warming.
The devastating flood is a reminder of how we, as a global community, are under a massive threat of climate crisis.
The path forward now requires a fundamental shift in international climate governance with strong underlying solidarity and empathy. Until every nation acknowledges and executes its environmental responsibilities, the principle of global climate justice will remain an unfulfilled promise and will eventually exacerbate environmental damage.
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