‘Glaciers, floods don’t travel with visas’: Nepal PM asks India, China to join Himalayan warning network
NEW DELHI: Nepal PM Balendra Shah called on India and China to join a trilateral Himalayan climate resilience mechanism to share satellite data, jointly monitor dangerous glacial lakes, strengthen early-warning systems and coordinate cross-border disaster response, telling UN General Assembly that climate change “does not recognise borders” after the Aug 26 deluge left at least 1,400 dead and more than 6,000 missing.In his maiden address to UN General Assembly, Shah, 36, said, “Glaciers and floods do not travel with a visa stamped on passports.” His address on Thursday came during his first foreign trip since taking office on March 27. He thanked India and China for their “prompt and generous assistance” after the disaster.Shah said warming was destabilising fragile Himalayan ecology by thawing permafrost, weakening mountain slopes and increasing risks from ice-rock avalanches, floods, landslides and other cascading hazards. The Aug 26 disaster, he said, devastated both sides of Nepal-China border before floodwaters continued downstream towards India. Nepal’s rapid assessment put physical recovery needs at around 10% of GDP.Proposing a “Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism, led by Nepal, India and China”, Shah said the Hindu Kush Himalaya supported nearly two billion people through water, ecosystems, agriculture and livelihoods. “Let the Himalayas be a laboratory for international cooperation, not a border of fragmented information,” he said.Shah said Nepal contributed less than 0.1% of global greenhouse-gas emissions but was bearing a disproportionate cost. “We did not create this crisis. Yet we are paying a colossal price for it,” he said, arguing that countries contributing least to global warming should not be pushed further into debt to rebuild after climate disasters.“When a climate-driven disaster destroys the infrastructure of a poor country, the answer cannot simply be another mega loan or a patchwork of small grants,” Shah said, seeking adequate grant-based financing and calling resources available through existing international climate funds inadequate. Criticising cumbersome procedures for accessing climate finance, he said, “When the house is burning, we do not ask the family to complete fifty forms. We act.”Turning to wider global priorities, Shah said: “We have built a world with a flawless logistics system for war and a broken one for food,” he said, before invoking Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to underline the region’s shared vulnerabilities.Shah, currently the world’s youngest national leader and head of govt, also referred to attention surrounding his age. “I did not come here to make that the story,” he said, arguing instead for a multilateral system in which smaller and poorer countries had a meaningful voice.
