Demand Climate Justice

The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice stands in solidarity with the people of Nepal and Tibet as they confront one of the most devastating disasters to hit the Himalayan region in recent years. We mourn those who have been killed and stand in grief with the communities that have lost their family and loved ones, their homes, their lives and livelihood and we stand with the workers engaged in the treacherous relief and rescue efforts as they confront the unimaginable scale of the disaster. Nearly 1000 people have been reported killed so far and thousands remain missing after an enormous collapse of ice and rock in high Himalayas triggered a cascading event in the Lhende Khola, sending a sudden surge of water, rock and sediment into the Bhote Koshi-Trishuli river system causing devastative floods in the border region. The formation of new lakes behind the ice and rock debris continue to pose a risk of more destructive floods while rescue operations still continue in the region.

The scale of this tragedy demands more than our sympathy, mourning or condolences. It demands that governments confront the conditions that are making communities across the Himalayas, and on the frontlines of climate impacts everywhere, increasingly unsafe. While the people of Nepal and Tibet grapple with this devastation, the broader climate context and global failure to address it form a clear path that has led to this disaster. Rising temperatures are rapidly transforming the Himalayan cryosphere, accelerating glacier loss and destabilising high-mountain environments. 

The Hindu Kush Himalaya contains more than 63,000 glaciers and feeds ten major river systems on which huge populations across South Asia depend. These mountain’s glaciers had disappeared 65% faster between 2011 and 2020 than in the previous decade. As glaciers retreat and permafrost thaws, slopes become less stable, glacial lakes expand and communities face growing risks from floods, landslides, avalanches, and cascading disasters. This is also not an isolated Himalayan emergency. Communities across the region have repeatedly faced catastrophic floods, landslides and glacial lake outburst floods, from Sikkim in India in 2023, Thame in Nepal in 2024, to the Tibet-Nepal border in 2025.

What is striking is that Nepal has contributed almost nothing to the crisis that is transforming its mountains. It is responsible for only 0.1% global greenhouse gas emissions yet finds itself on the frontlines of climate impacts. It is forced to self-finance the monitoring of glaciers and unstable slopes while building early-warning systems, but also the protection of settlements and infrastructure, responses to disasters, and rebuilding of what is destroyed by disasters that are increasingly becoming hard to predict. The World Bank has warned that unchecked climate impacts could make Nepal’s economy at least 7% smaller by 2050. Meanwhile a Green Climate Fund project intended to reduce the risks of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in Nepal took 7 years to be approved. 

The fundamental injustice is that countries with very little responsibility for the climate crisis are being forced to spend their limited resources surviving it while the global climate finance policies continue to fail them. This is precisely why adaptation finance is a matter of survival, not a secondary component of climate policy. Developing countries will need nearly US$400 billion every year for adaptation by 2035 while the international public adaptation finance was only US$26 billion in 2023. That gap means countries such as Nepal are being told to become more resilient without being given adequate resources and support required to do it. On the other hand, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage has seen pittance in financial commitments so far. Developed countries must significantly increase public, grant-based finance, rather than loans, with direct and rapid access for affected countries and communities under their existing obligations. Where mitigation and adaptation have failed to prevent harm, loss and damage must be paid for at a scale that reflects actual needs of trillions. This is a historical debt and reparations owed to the Global South and not voluntary contributions disguised as aid or charity and must reach the communities at the frontline of the crisis instead of creating new markets for private investors or new debts for governments.

At the same time countries most responsible for this crisis must move first in stopping the expansion of the fossil-fuel economy. But in contrast the United States, already the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, is on track for another record year of natural gas production in 2026 while the US crude production and export reached a record early this year. Similarly in Western Europe, Norway, the largest petroleum producer and the largest supplier of gas to Europe, expanded the exploration area for oil and gas exploration in 2026. These are not economic decisions but political choices. Rich countries cannot describe disasters in Nepal as an unfortunate consequence of a changing climate while continuing to explicitly expand the industries driving that change.

Nepal cannot reduce the world’s emissions on behalf of the polluters. It cannot protect the Himalayas through adaptation alone while the world continues to burn more fossil fuels. And it should not have to take on more debt to protect its people from a crisis overwhelmingly created elsewhere. The immediate priority in Nepal and Tibet must be rescue, relief and recovery led by the needs of affected communities. But international solidarity cannot end with emergency assistance after people have died. We demand:

• Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage must immediately respond and deliver on Nepal’s request for urgent and direct funds to support its immediate response capacity 
• The Global North countries and other big polluters must cut their emissions far faster without false solutions and end continued fossil fuel expansion
• Global North must urgently provide much higher public and grant-based finance so Global South countries can adapt before disasters happen
• Global North countries must fund the Loss and Damage Fund at the scale of the losses communities are already experiencing without pushing loans and private finance as substitutes for their public finance obligations

We stand with the people of Nepal and Tibet in grief and solidarity and also with their right to justice. What happens next must not be another cycle of disaster, condolences and forgotten promises. There must be greater protection for communities now, far deeper emissions cuts by those most responsible, adequate finance for adaptation and loss and damage, and accountability for the governments and corporations that continue to fuel this crisis.

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