Nepal appeals for international help after devastating floods

Nepal is calling on the world’s largest economies to help the Himalayan country recover from devastating flash floods, as it accounts for less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said in an interview with The Guardian.

Khanal urged the world’s biggest polluters to “wake up” and acknowledge their share of responsibility for the disaster, which has left thousands of people dead or missing.

“It is imperative for those in the global community who benefit from larger, much more polluting economies, and whose historical contribution to greenhouse gases is much bigger than ours, to accept a shared responsibility. This affects all of humanity,” he noted.

Scientists say the climate crisis contributed to the floods that began in late August, when the partial collapse of a melting glacier triggered a deadly landslide and flash flooding that affected China’s Tibet region and Nepal. More than 1,300 deaths have so far been confirmed, while over 5,500 people remain missing. 

The Nepalese foreign minister stressed that the disaster was far more destructive than the country’s usual monsoon-season floods, comparing the scale of the devastation to the 2015 earthquake, which left much of Nepal in ruins.

“This felt like a tsunami that was coming from the Himalayas,” the minister said. “We experienced waves as high as 60, 70 feet, which were mixed with debris, mud, stones, rocks, and came at the speed of almost 180km per hour. Towns, villages and highways were completely wiped out and there are some areas still disconnected.”

Khanal acknowledged that securing climate-related compensation, which Nepal had hoped to receive, would involve “political challenges.”

By Jeyhun Aghazada