Kathmandu:
Nepal Prime Minister Balendra (Balen) Shah used his maiden address to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to call for a Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism in partnership with India and China in the wake of the recent devastating flash floods in the Himalayan nation.
Pitching a data and expertise-sharing framework between the three nations, Shah told world leaders that a warming climate is destabilising the fragile Himalayan ecology.
The Balancing Act
His call was in unison with the efforts of successive Nepali governments post-2015 to achieve a geopolitical balance between India and China. As a landlocked country wedged between two mega-economies, Kathmandu has long sought to preserve its strategic autonomy by balancing the influence of its two neighbours.
Speaking at UNGA, Shah said, “The Hindu Kush Himalaya is home to nearly two billion people. These mountains provide water, ecosystems, agriculture, and livelihoods to populations far beyond Nepal. The Himalayas are not peripheral to the planet. They are part of the planet’s life-support system.”
“That is why, as an urgent first step, we propose that we establish a Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism, led by Nepal, India, and China.”
Call for Info Exchange
According to the 36-year-old rapper-turned-politician, the mechanism should be used to share satellite data and expertise to monitor dangerous glacial lakes.
“Let us strengthen joint early-warning systems. And when disaster strikes, let us coordinate assistance across borders. Let the Himalayas become a laboratory of international cooperation, rather than a frontier of fragmented information,” he said.
“Melting permafrost is fracturing mountain slopes beneath the glaciers and accelerating the risks of ice-rock avalanches, floods, landslides, and other cascading hazards. The resulting devastation unleashed havoc on both sides of the Nepal-China border. The flood continued downstream towards India,” he said.
Shah said the devastating Nepal floods gave the world a fundamental message that “Climate change does not recognise borders. Glaciers and floods do not travel with a visa stamped on passports.”
The Gratitude
Shah expressed Nepal’s deep gratitude to the countries that came to its aid in the aftermath of the deluge. “Our immediate neighbours, India and China, offered prompt and generous assistance. Other friendly countries, the United Nations system, humanitarian agencies, philanthropies, and people around the world stood with Nepal,” he said.
Nepal Prime Minister Shah told the UN that Nepal now faces a massive task of recovery and reconstruction. “It destroys roads, bridges, schools, homes, farms, and livelihoods. It destroys clean energy infrastructure that we need to fuel our future. And it forces a poor country to borrow money to repair damage it did not cause,” he said.
The Next Step
Nepal was struck by massive flash floods, triggered by an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26. The floods devastated towns and villages in northern and central Nepal.
The number of deaths from the devastating flood has reached 1,452, with over 4,700 to 6,000 people still reported missing.
According to the Rapid Disaster Needs Assessment (RDNA) report prepared by a joint technical team of the National Planning Commission and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, the recent floods are estimated to have caused losses of US$2.69 billion.
The RDNA report estimates that US$4.77 billion will be required for the reconstruction and recovery of affected infrastructure and assets, equivalent to around 10 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
