Loss and damage fund urged to hold emergency meeting on Nepal

After last week’s catastrophic flash flooding caused hundreds of deaths and an estimated $5 billion of destruction in Nepal, some board members of the UN’s new loss and damage fund board have called for an extraordinary meeting to allocate money to help the Himalayan country.

Following a direct appeal for funding from Nepal’s government on Monday, developing-country board members gathered online and eight signed a letter, seen by Climate Home News, asking the fund’s board to hold a meeting to respond to the request.

After last week’s catastrophic flash flooding caused hundreds of deaths and an estimated $5 billion of destruction in Nepal, some board members of the UN’s new loss and damage fund board have called for an extraordinary meeting to allocate money to help the Himalayan country.

Following a direct appeal for funding from Nepal’s government on Monday, developing-country board members gathered online and eight signed a letter, seen by Climate Home News, asking the fund’s board to hold a meeting to respond to the request.

The letter, signed by eight African, Asian and Least Developed Country board members, said the debris-laden torrent – which scientists believe was unleashed by a glacial slope collapsing after unusually hot weather – constitutes “precisely the kind of climate-related extreme weather events the fund was established to address”.

“The scale of loss of life, displacement, and destruction of energy, transport, and economic infrastructure warrants the board’s urgent consideration of how the fund’s existing instruments should be mobilised to support Nepal’s government and affected communities,” the letter said.

The rules of the fund’s initial phase, which it is now in, allow for it to support “rapid response”, the letter noted. The fund’s governing instrument says it can provide funds “complementary to humanitarian actions taken immediately after an extreme weather event” as well as funds for “immediate or long-term, reconstruction or rehabilitation”, the letter added.

Governments agreed at UN climate talks to set up the fund in 2022 and it launched its first call for proposals at the end of last year. It received 180 submissions, mainly for long-term projects to help countries reduce the risks from climate threats, like improving water infrastructure in Jamaica or flood response in Bangladesh.

After delaying decisions at its last board meeting as it continued to work out processes, it has yet to approve any funding requests. Despite being set up on the back of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, the board has not yet given out any money in response to climate disasters nor expressed a clear willingness to do so.

The secretariat of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication. A few days ago, it expressed solidarity for those affected by the disaster in a social media post.

Rapid response precedent

The board members signing the letter on Nepal want to set a precedent, with the letter saying the board should consider “any procedural lessons” the response to the flooding “offer for strengthening the Fund’s rapid-response modalities and operational protocols for sudden-onset extreme weather events”.

Harjeet Singh, global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign, told Climate Home News civil society has pushed “really hard” for the FRLD to be a rapid response fund rather than just inviting requests for project funding and reviewing them at regular board meetings as other UN climate funds do.

“Climate disasters like the one unfolding in Nepal cannot wait for scheduled committee cycles,” he said. “The Loss and Damage Fund was built for moments exactly like this.”

Nepal has received multi-million dollar humanitarian pledges from several governments already and the United Nations’ Central Emergency Response Fund is designed to rapidly disburse aid cash for disasters.

But Singh – also founding director of India’s Satat Sampada Climate Foundation – said that, with disasters becoming more frequent and severe, the humanitarian system cannot support all countries in their recovery efforts and the fund should bridge the gap.

“The Board Co-Chairs must heed the call of developing nations, convene an emergency session immediately, and prove that this Fund is ready to deliver real support when frontline communities need it most,” he told Climate Home News.

While the FRLD’s response to Nepal’s recent disaster could set an important precedent, it is only likely to be of limited practical help. The fund’s rules mean it can only give out a maximum of $20 million to each project in its current initial phase. With only $820 million pledged by rich countries and not all of that yet delivered, it has allocated a total of $350 million to spend so far and without further contributions could run of money next year.

Nepalese climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal, who visited the affected area just days before the flood, told The Nation magazine that while $20 million “may only be a symbolic gesture”, it “could set an important precedent for how the fund responds when such disasters strike vulnerable countries in the future”.

The government’s preliminary estimate of the damage is $5 billion, with many homes and critical infrastructure destroyed, as well as over 1,000 people dead.

A letter to the FRLD board from Nepal’s finance and environment ministers said that Nepal had only contributed “negligibly to global greenhouse gas emissions yet continues to bear disproportionate and escalating climate impacts”.

Requesting the fund’s board take a special decision to allocate funding to Nepal, the ministers emphasised that “time is of the essence”. “A prompt response would help protect affected populations, restore essential services, prevent further suffering and demonstrate that the fund can translate international solidarity into timely support for vulnerable countries and communities when it is most urgently needed,” they wrote.

Glaciers ‘melt like butter’

Despite initial reports of an earthquake, the US Geological Survey has said the floods were caused by a glacier collapsing and the resulting landslide hitting the bottom of the valley causing “subsequent catastrophic impacts downstream”.

Alton Byers, a scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, told journalists this week that global warming has seen glaciers recede, glacial lakes forming and glacial lake outburst floods increasing.

He said that a heating glacier is like butter taken out of the refrigerator. “It becomes mushy. It no longer has the ability to hold together. What that means is that masses of rock and glaciers no longer are as resistant to gravity as they once were,” he explained. “Add to that melting water at altitude, which lubricates the interface between the rock and the glacier and you get an increased likelihood of slippage.”

He added that a trigger – like gravity or an earth tremor – can then set off the sudden release of masses of bedrock and glacial ice, “which is what happened last week”.

As well as reducing emissions to rein in climate change, Byers said that authorities can adapt to climate change by not building in flood plains. Many of the destroyed buildings in Nepal were located in places that have flooded before, he noted.

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The disaster took place on the Himalayan border of Nepal and Tibet, which is governed by China. Chinese state media are reporting at least 16 people dead and hundreds missing. China’s government has made no appeal to the loss and damage fund and the board’s letter does not mention China or Tibet.

The FRLD board’s co-chairs are now expected to respond to the letter, with any extraordinary board meeting likely to be held online, so that members from around the world can attend at short notice.