Just a few weeks ago, the United Kingdom’s new Foreign Secretary gave a speech on climate and nature at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, where he outlined the UK's renewed commitment to addressing the climate and nature crises both domestically and internationally. He stated, “There will be no global stability without climate stability. And there will be no climate stability without a more equal partnership between the Global North and the Global South.”
Climate Justice and Equitable Partnerships to Tackle the Climate Crisis
So, what does a more equal partnership look like, particularly in this region? Part of it involves countries with greater wealth and responsibility for climate change, like the UK, contributing their fair share of international climate finance. I will return to this point shortly.
Another part of this partnership includes funding regional institutions, like ICIMOD, to enable the mobilization of a strong, united voice at climate and biodiversity conferences among the countries of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, and, more broadly, to foster an alliance of mountain nations.
One aim of the UK-funded Himalayan Resilience Enabling Action Programme, which is part of our £274 million Climate Action for a Resilient Asia (CARA) programme, is to support greater regional cooperation in addressing transboundary climate risks. Through this programme, ICIMOD is also working to foster collaboration among countries in the region.
Similarly, we have been supporting the least developed countries (LDCs), including Bhutan and Nepal, to establish their own approaches to climate resilience through the LDC Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience. This LDC-led initiative is grounded in principles of equality—between LDCs and the international community and between government and non-government actors.
Another aspect of this partnership is empowering local communities to address the questions most relevant to them, such as:
- Which crops and varieties can we grow here, now and in the face of climate projections, to ensure food and nutrition security and generate additional income?
- Which bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides can we create cheaply from locally available ingredients to avoid the need to purchase polluting and expensive agrochemicals?
I was pleased to see recently that the Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) research programme, co-funded by the UK, is supporting local action research across Africa and Asia, including Nepal. This is being done in collaboration with communities and local and national research institutions. We will leverage the UK’s research capacity to bolster these efforts, alongside our broader support for adaptation in Nepal and the region.
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The Urgent Need for Adaptation – and Locally Led Adaptation
Here in Nepal and the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, we are witnessing rapid glacier melt and average temperature increases significantly above global averages. The lives and livelihoods of vulnerable mountain communities are already being affected by climate-induced losses and damage.
Recent floods in Nepal, as well as in Bangladesh and India (and in recent years, Pakistan), underscore the risk-multiplying effect of climate change, with vulnerable, ill-prepared communities suffering the most. I extend my condolences to the families affected by these tragedies.
Climate change disproportionately affects already vulnerable groups, including women and girls, Indigenous Peoples, marginalized castes and ethnicities, people with disabilities, the elderly, and remote highland communities. Emigration, particularly of young men, from Nepal and the region is further accelerated by the effects of climate change on agricultural productivity.
A more equal partnership to tackle climate change must acknowledge the link between climate justice and social justice. The response must focus on locally led adaptation, with support targeted at the most vulnerable. The UK’s Resilience, Adaptation, and Inclusion in Nepal (RAIN) and our regional CARA programme are working toward this goal.
The governments of both the UK and Nepal have endorsed the principles of locally led adaptation, and we encourage other governments and organizations to endorse and implement them. This is a key aspect of implementing the Paris Agreement’s Global Goal on Adaptation and country-owned National Adaptation Plans.
The Value of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Resilience
With the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP16 in Cali and the climate COP in Baku fast approaching, it is a good time to reiterate how closely intertwined the climate and nature crises are. Intergovernmental dialogues and on-the-ground implementation must connect, involving all sectors of the economy and society.
This is why the UK sees great merit in nature-based solutions for climate resilience. For example, we are supporting the scale-up of agroecology—an approach to farming that fosters a more equitable partnership between humankind and nature—in Nepal and other parts of the region. Even in remote highland landscapes, a sustainable bioeconomy based on sound natural resource management, local value addition, and fair returns to local communities offers great promise for resilient, inclusive livelihoods.
There is also scope for public-private-philanthropic partnerships. Publicly funded research, capacity development, and philanthropic payments for biodiversity outcomes can help derisk private sector investments in bio-products like perfumes, toiletries, high-value foods, and nutraceuticals derived from indigenous plants and yak milk. We are also supporting the demonstration and scaling up of nature-based approaches to flood risk reduction.
A Clean and Just Energy Transition through a New Global Clean Power Alliance
Access to modern, clean, and sustainable renewable energy is key to the resilience of communities in Nepal and South Asia. Clean cooking solutions are essential for climate, nature, and health, particularly for the women and girls who often bear the burden of firewood gathering and cooking. South Asia still has one billion people without access to clean cooking technologies and fuels.
The UK has been working to de-risk the financing for small-scale renewable energy projects in Nepal. We also see great potential for carbon credits to accelerate the adoption of affordable solar-powered cooking systems. At the same time, Nepal and Bhutan's hydropower potential, along with the wider renewable energy potential across the region, presents opportunities for regional cooperation through the development of a South Asia clean electricity market. This market could enable more rapid decarbonization of Indian and Bangladeshi grids while delivering economic and energy security benefits to all countries.
The UK is supporting progress toward this goal through the World Bank. As this initiative moves forward, increasing the climate resilience of electricity systems through improved planning and diversification will be essential. We also see great potential in storage solutions and green hydrogen. While the challenges are great, so too are the opportunities. The UK has set a goal to be the first major economy to deliver entirely clean power by 2030. By leading by example, the UK aims to leverage this ambition through a new Global Clean Power Alliance to help accelerate the energy transition worldwide. This alliance will be a partnership of equals, built on fairness.
A Progressive Realist Approach to Mobilizing Climate Finance
As promised, I return to the crucial issue of climate finance and how our Foreign Secretary’s progressive realist approach shapes our strategy. We start with an ambitious commitment to provide £11.6 billion in international climate finance between 2021/22 and 2025/26 and to triple our annual international adaptation spend from £500 million in 2021 to £1.5 billion by 2025. The UK has also worked with a wide range of countries, including the Maldives, to build consensus on the outline of the loss and damage fund ahead of last year’s COP.
In his speech at Kew Gardens, the Foreign Secretary announced that he would soon present to Parliament a guarantee to the Asian Development Bank that would unlock $1.2 billion of climate finance for developing countries in the region. He also reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to push for reforms of the international financial system, alongside partners like Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of climate-vulnerable Barbados and champion of the Bridgetown Agenda.
This is necessary because the challenges to accessing climate finance are systemic. The most vulnerable and fragile countries, and the weakest actors within these countries, are both the most in need of climate finance and the least able to navigate the complex systems to access it. We are committed to making access to international climate finance easier and faster for developing countries, particularly the most climate-vulnerable ones, such as LDCs and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). In our role as co-chair of the Green Climate Fund this year, we have overseen pleasing progress: the latest board meeting approved a record $1 billion in funding, with more money now directed toward adaptation in vulnerable countries.
A progressive realist approach to climate finance includes delivering on the UNFCCC’s principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. It also requires pragmatic recognition of the limits of Official Development Assistance (ODA) grant resources and the capacities of many local and national institutions in the most climate-vulnerable countries.
Here in Nepal, this has led us to support the Asian Development Bank’s development of a new green and resilient financing facility in collaboration with the government of Nepal. Importantly, this will be a government-owned mechanism for corralling, coordinating, and channeling climate finance to those who most need it. At the same time, it will reduce the red tape involved in accessing climate finance, compared to the current project-by-project approach. To support Nepal’s commitment to allocating 80% of climate finance to the local level, the UK will also fund the design of a community-level window for this facility.
A progressive realist approach also means making the most of ODA resources by using grants to support adaptation for the most vulnerable in areas where there is no private return to be had. It also means mobilizing the largest possible amounts of domestic and private climate finance for both adaptation and mitigation. This will require building on this April’s successful Nepal Investment Summit to reduce remaining regulatory barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI) for green, resilient growth.
Within an equitable partnership, we must all hold ourselves, our leaders, and our representatives accountable for the way we spend climate finance. And, given the organizers of this event, I should note there is a key role for the media, as well as voters, in this respect.
Together, we must aim to enhance not only the quantity but also the quality of climate finance. We must strive for good governance, gender equality, disability and social inclusion, and sustainable capacity building of national and local institutions. We also need to achieve an appropriate balance between mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage, and between different levels of concessionality. Only in this way can we mobilize the required volumes of climate finance and ensure it delivers the necessary results.
Conclusion
This conclave is evocatively entitled “The Call of Mount Everest for Global Climate Action.” While it is easy to get carried away with the notion that scaling annual summits will bring us to the promised land of climate resilience and stability, I would like to close by focusing on the local communities of Namobuddha municipality, here in Nepal. People here have long relied on springs for water for farming, drinking, and washing. But these springs, like many others in the Hindu Kush Himalayan mid-hills, are drying up rapidly due to climate change and other factors such as seismic events. This has a disproportionate impact on women and girls, who bear much of the burden of water collection.
In recent years, ICIMOD, with support from the UK and partners like Norway and Sweden, has trained local community members and government officials to map their springs and restore dried-up springs through the nature-based solution of spring-shed management. Spring water—and hope—has been restored to these communities. The municipality and six others have now agreed to work together, learning from each other to scale up this solution.
Collectively, we know many solutions to tackle the climate and nature crises. What we need are equitable partnerships—between countries, communities, governments, civil society, the private sector, researchers, and development partners—to scale up these solutions. It is our urgent duty to act together, to turn these springs of hope into a sea of change. And we must do this in time to save our snow—and the water, food, and energy security of the two billion people who depend on it here in the world’s Third Pole.
The author is the Ambassador of the UK to Nepal. This is an edited version of the speech he delivered at the Nepal Republic Media Climate Change Conclave 2024, held in Kathmandu on Thursday.
