Remarks by Hon. Mr Shisir Khanal at the Kathmandu Climate Week 2026 on “Climate Justice for Building Climate Resilience to Global Climate Diplomacy”

Remarks by Hon. Mr. Shisir Khanal

Kathmandu Climate Week 2026

Climate Justice for Building Climate Resilience to Global Climate Diplomacy

Kathmandu | 2 October 2026

Kathmandu Climate Week 2026  Organising Committee,
Honorable Members of the Parliament,
Representatives of government, civil society and the private sector,
Researchers, experts and young climate leaders,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Namaste and good morning.

It is a profound pleasure to join you at the inaugural Kathmandu Climate Week.

I commend the organizers for convening this vital platform. Bringing together the full spectrum of our society—from policy makers and scientists to grassroots community leaders, financial institutions, private innovators, and our digitally mobilized youth—is not merely welcome; it is essential.

This gathering could not be more timely. Climate change is no longer a peripheral environmental portfolio or an academic talking point. It has become an existential reality touching every single dimension of our national life—reshaping agriculture, infrastructure, water security, public health, energy transition, fiscal stability, and foreign policy.

I have returned only a few days ago from New York, where climate justice was at the heart of Nepal’s engagements during the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Right Honorable Prime Minister placed our frontline vulnerabilities firmly before the world. Across high-level forums at the UN, we championed a clear message: the preservation of the Himalaya—the Third Pole whose glacial waters nourish nearly two billion lives downstream—is not an isolated mountain concern, but a pillar of global ecological security.

During UNGA, we convened the Sagarmatha to the Sea dialogue, uniting mountain, island, and coastal nations around an undeniable truth: the glaciers and the oceans belong to a single, indivisible planetary continuum. What melts in the highest peaks inevitably cascades into the rising seas. The climate system does not recognize the political boundaries or administrative lines through which we divide our world.

Today, back home in Kathmandu, we must carry that momentum forward. The central question before us is simple yet profound: How can our actions on the ground build authentic domestic resilience while endowing Nepal’s climate diplomacy with unassailable authority on the world stage?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The tragedy of 26 August has given that question harrowing urgency.

Just weeks ago, our mountain valleys were battered by what can only be termed a Himalayan Tsunami—an abrupt, high-altitude glacial and rock collapse that unleashed an immense, sediment-heavy wall of water hurtling down steep river corridors. In minutes, roaring floodwaters claimed precious lives, erased critical highways and bridges, destroyed clean hydropower infrastructure, and pulverized entire community livelihoods.

Nepal has long endured natural shocks, rugged terrain, and structural constraints, but we have never been defined by them.

Yet again this disaster reminds us that climate shocks have become a structural brake on our development. Globally, the Sustainable Development Goals remain off track, with barely 36 percent of targets showing adequate headway. In Nepal, instead of channeling our national budget entirely into schools, modern hospitals, digital infrastructure, and job creation, we are repeatedly forced to divert scarce resources into emergency post-disaster reconstruction.

This is where climate justice must pivot from an abstract slogan into concrete delivery.

Nepal contributes less than 0.1 percent of global greenhouse emissions. Yet our people pay with their lives and assets for a crisis they had no hand in creating. Climate justice means acknowledging this disproportionate burden.
 

Therefore, we demand new, predictable, accessible, and grant-based climate finance. It means robust adaptation support, technology transfer, and direct capacity-building.

Following the August catastrophe, Nepal formally approached the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Our experience reinforces our international demand: the Loss and Damage Fund cannot become an administrative labyrinth of procedural hurdles. It must be fully capitalized with new, addition-based public grants that deliver immediate liquidity when disasters strike.

Yet, while we demand international accountability, we must demonstrate equal rigor at home. International diplomacy is only as credible as our domestic execution.

First, we must institutionalize risk-informed development. When we construct a highway, a bridge, a transmission line, or an urban settlement, we cannot build for the climate of yesterday. We must engineer our infrastructure to withstand the severe climate conditions of twenty or thirty years from now.

Second, we must bridge the divide between scientific knowledge and policy action. When our researchers and satellites track glacial retreat and swelling lakes, that data cannot remain trapped in academic papers. It must translate into real-time, impact-based early warning systems that reach the vulnerable farmer and remote settlements in minutes.

Third, our institutions must build the absorptive capacity to manage climate capital efficiently, ensuring resources directly protect frontline households.

Fourth, because our rivers and climate hazards are transboundary, we must deepen regional scientific cooperation. Depoliticized real-time hydrological and meteorological data-sharing with our neighbors is essential to safeguard shared river basins.

To anchor this work, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has established a dedicated Climate Diplomacy Section. This initiative bridges domestic climate realities directly with international negotiations, ensuring our diplomacy is sustained, coherent, and proactive.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is why the inclusive design of Kathmandu Climate Week is so vital. True climate diplomacy does not belong solely to environmentalists in conference halls. It draws its lifeblood from society. The hydrologist studying our cryosphere contributes to Nepal’s voice. The local government crafting resilient land-use plans contributes to it. The indigenous community stewarding community forests and watersheds contributes to it.

The entrepreneur pioneering clean energy solutions contributes to it. And our youth, demanding accountability and climate action, are the moral heart of this movement.

Our responsibility in government is to ensure that local wisdom informs public policy, and that public policy drives Nepal’s external diplomacy. In that spirit, the Institute of Foreign Affairs is hosting a dedicated session this morning on “Understanding Climate Negotiations and Nepal’s Position,” and I encourage your active participation.

As we look toward COP31 and the Midterm Review of the Doha Programme of Action, our international voice will be formidable because it will carry the authentic evidence of our communities, rigorous science, and practical solutions.

Last week in New York, I spoke of the journey from Sagarmatha to the Sea. Today, let us complete that circle: from our villages and mountain slopes to Kathmandu, and from Kathmandu to the world.

Our diplomacy must carry the reality of our people to the world, and bring back the partnerships, technology, and grant resources our people deserve.

Let us work together with shared resolve, courage, and purpose.

I wish Kathmandu Climate Week 2026 every success.

Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah,

Thank you. Namaste.