Utilise Climate Fund

The climate summit known as COP 29 that is underway in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, is receiving the global limelight as it carries weight in forging deals on finance and strategies essential to fight the impacts of climate change. The global warming, caused by the greenhouse gas emissions, has posed a real threat to humanity. We have endured extreme climatic events occurring in the form of heavy downpours, droughts, floods, landslides, heat waves and cyclones throughout the world. Now all eyes are on Baku conference where negotiators are struggling to ink an agreement to create a fund worth hundreds of billions of dollars to help vulnerable nations to transit to clean energy and adapt to the climate change. 

However, reports from Baku suggest that the negotiation process has been frustratingly slow.   Moreover, the environmental activists have accused the fossil fuel industry of manipulating the critical COP 29 talks to suit its interest. Sensing the sluggish negotiation process, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and top climate negotiators have called for “a fundamental overhaul of the COP.” In a joint letter, they have pointed out the need for a shift from negotiation to implementation, and from process to result. The delegates from 190 countries are attending the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a hope that it will come up with concrete outcomes to address the risks caused by the climate change. 

As a least-developed and mountainous country, Nepal has been participating in all COP gatherings since the Earth Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro of Brazil in 1992. It was the milestone event that led to the adoption of the UNFCCC two years later. In every COP meet, Nepal has been actively involved in the negotiation process, advocating the rights, especially of the mountainous and least developed nations, bearing the brunt of climate change. Ahead of the summit, Nepal has released a post-disaster study to assess how human-induced climate change influenced the likelihood and severity of the extreme rainfall, according to a news report carried by this daily. 

Nepal's mountain ecosystem has been badly disrupted owing to the effects of climate change. Himalayan glaciers are melting and rainfall pattern is changing. This has severely affected agricultural activities. In the third week of this September, monsoon-induced downpours, floods and landslides killed at least 244 people and destroyed the infrastructure worth billions of rupees. The authorities have stated that research findings have consolidated Nepal's position to claim climate fund to implement resilient and green structures. 

In the ongoing the COP 29 summit, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and Nepal have inked an agreement to implement two major climate resilience projects worth around US$ 10.5 million. In 2019, Nepal received US$ 39.9 million from the Green Climate Fund to implement the Building Resilient Chure Region project. However, there has been delays in disbursement of fund. Experts have pointed to the failure in the effective mobilisation of the fund. The government has been able to secure substantial financial support to execute various projects under the Ministry of Forest and Environment but there are cases where the money is returned for lack of capacity to design programmes to spend it. Competent human resources and strong political will are necessary to effectively utilise the climate related funds.