While the Bhote kosi-Trishuli disaster struck suddenly earlier this year, the glacier along the slope of Langtang Lirung had long been primed for deadly collapse by climate change.
The thawing of the underlying permafrost weakened the mountain’s structural integrity, leading to the glacier collapsing to the valley floor and triggering the cascading disaster.
Global discourse after the event focused on Nepal’s lack of adaptive capacity, infrastructure and governance, with little attention on the underlying drivers of a changing climate. The footage that captured the immediate destruction of rushing water and debris, referred to as a ‘mountain tsunami’, gives insight into the realities of this impossible adaptation task.
Adaptation narratives imposed on Nepal’s Himalayan communities have long been driven by political sources with their own vested interests, and ability to influence climate action or inaction. Often referred to as the ‘Water Tower of Aisa’ or ‘The Third Pole’, the looming presence of the melting Himalaya poses severe risk to downstream communities across borders with catastrophic floods, glacial lake outburst floods, avalanches, drought.
This accelerating climate risk cannot be understood in isolation from the communities that it affects. River basins are corridors of life, with settlements, agriculture, infrastructure and transnational highways all drawn to their carved route. Beyond representing risk, the Himalaya also holds deep, sacred cultural significance for local and global communities, as shown by the ‘funeral’ for Yala Glacier last year.
CLIMATE INJUSTICE
Climate change disproportionately affects marginalised communities who are least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The pursuit of justice is therefore gaining momentum in climate adaptation conversations.
Climate change, specifically adaptation, reinforces and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities that the core imposes on the periphery. Developed countries have benefited from the dispossession and oppression of developing countries, like Nepal.
Climate injustice manifests as the prior actions of core countries like fossil fuel exporting countries, having consequences for the peripheral Himalaya. This poses the question: who gains and who loses in bearing the costs of climate impacts and adaptation?
As the climate continues to change at unprecedented rates, it is getting more difficult to factor in catastrophic risk. So why does climate discourse still centre on adaptation, if it is increasingly out of reach? There is a need for adaptation to expand beyond typical understandings, to highlight themes like justice that have been purposely neglected.
Climate change adaptation narratives imposed on Nepal’s Himalayan community are far from apolitical. Adaptation is socio-politically charged and often manifests as top-down approaches that favour market interests over local realities. Core imposing adaptation narratives on peripheral countries like Nepal distracts from their own responsibility and capability to mitigate climate change.
A key body within the core driving climate change discourse is the United Nations. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992, is structured around three problematic core-periphery dynamics: developed-developing, present-future, and mitigation-adaptation.
Countries signed up to the UNFCCC, including Nepal, are tasked to coordinate, and implement National Determined Contributions (NDCs) in line with the framework. These processes absorb governments’ time, energy, and often shape their trajectory, as they chase funding mechanisms that are increasingly hard to access, and forever insufficient.
UN discourse at the annual Conference of Parties (COPs) also hinges on climate finance, identifying it as a fundamental component of the global response to climate change. There is need to highlight the irony of foreign aid, where funds are distributed to the periphery to somehow respond to challenges created by the core.
By prioritising adaptation over mitigation, it reduces action to band-aid solutions that address symptoms rather than causes. Adaptation efforts are often hamstrung by the limited resources and governing capacity of affected countries.
In addition to falling short, adaptation is believed to be approaching limits as climate impacts intensify and the scale of required action becomes unattainable. There is a growing sense of powerlessness among global communities on the frontline of impacts, as inadequate efforts persist. While adaptation can seek to minimise loss and damage, it is an illusion to trust its capability in protecting lives and livelihoods from catastrophic risk.
Framing adaptation as a local issue deliberately shifts responsibility onto local actors, allowing higher levels of governance to escape obligations. Climate change is a shared risk across the Himalaya; therefore, any attempts to map and monitor risk should be collaborative.
There is also opportunity for climate discourse to step back and consider vulnerabilities from mountains to islands, as melting glaciers contribute to sea-level rise – linking impacts across time, space and geographies.
Risk perception and education is a major theme within adaptation narratives, that continues to place responsibility on the recipient of climate impacts. This was evident within a day of the recent disaster in Nepal, when the main lesson was reduced to improving awareness and disaster preparedness for the ever-vulnerable Himalayan region.
In efforts to further frame the vulnerability of communities, discourse emphasised that where people build, locate, and exist is the problem – again, ignoring the cause.
There is a need to address power dynamics and shift the spotlight towards climate mitigation efforts for meaningful action. Only through this, can the fundamental right to survival for Himalayan communities even begin to be upheld.
The PreCOP was held in Fiji and Tuvalu last month, ahead of the 31st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31). There in the geography of vulnerable island states, the Taku Pakasoa Declaration was adopted, emphasising strength in unity and action.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal attended the meeting to build political consensus. Minister Khanal advocated for increased financing, accessibility, and implementation for adaptation. While Nepal makes a strong case for its right to respond to climate impacts, there is risk in focusing predominantly on climate finance.
This shifts global climate conversations at the highest level from mitigating climate change to managing its consequences.
Prime Minister Balen Shah’s interest in driving a more political approach to climate action could prove to be an important step in the right direction, for both mitigation and adaptation. Nepal’s two immediate neighbours, with rapidly growing economies and carbon footprints, have a particular responsibility to work with Nepal for the Himalaya.
By framing the challenge politically, Prime Minister Shah embraces the possibility of China and India’s economies and influence shouldering a proportionate share of the burden alongside Nepal. In doing so, he invites a re-imagination of what climate action could look like globally.
COP31 must confront the realities of adaptation and challenge the narratives imposed on Nepal. For Himalayan communities, increased adaptation cannot replace meaningful climate mitigation. To advance just, sustainable futures in the Himalaya, adaptation must be acknowledged as a limited response, unable to solve or respond to growing climate impacts.
Core countries must radically phase out fossil fuel industries and act in the belief of mitigation, instead of continuing business as usual. If they are serious about climate justice, core countries must push beyond the constraints of financing adaptation and confront the industries driving the crisis. Adaptation will not stop the Himalayan glaciers from melting, but mitigation might.
