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On Monday, the opening ceremony of the UN climate conference, held this year in the Turkish resort city of Antalya, started an hour and a half late. Negotiators had been up late the night before, according to wire reports , arguing over whether climate finance would even make it onto the official agenda.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal was in the hall. He is leading the delegation that includes Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle, who is presenting Nepal’s positions at about half a dozen high-level sessions. Two weeks before departing for COP31, Khanal had laid out the asks at a national climate summit in Kathmandu. He spoke of “the devastating Himalayan Tsunami of 26 August” and called for a dedicated work program on mountains and for adaptation money that comes as grants rather than more debt.
Almost three months since the deadly floods killed more than 1,400 people — over 5,200 are still labeled as missing — Nepal arrives in Antalya with something no other country has. In October, the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) approved $20 million for communities along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river corridors that were impacted by the disaster. It was the first time the fund, created in 2022, had set money aside for a specific disaster. But the money set aside is less than half a percent of the recovery and reconstruction bill estimated by the government, at $4.7 billion, roughly a tenth of GDP. In Gosaikunda Rural Municipality alone, private housing losses come to $68 million, according to the government’s rapid damage assessment.
Amid the euphoria of the historic funding, there are finer details that will decide whether the country actually sees the money. So far, there is no date for disbursement of the funds, and the government has yet to submit a proposal. After that, it needs to pass a technical review, and then win final approval from the board.
Even getting this far was slow. Wagle and Environment Minister Geeta Chaudhary wrote to the FRLD board days after the flood, saying time was of the essence. It took a month and a half to organize the meeting that approved that money. The fund has received about eight times more in requests than it holds, from 119 countries. And Antalya is unlikely to change that math.
At COP30 in Belém last year, countries set a goal of at least tripling adaptation finance by 2035, without saying from what baseline. By this summer at the meeting in Bonn, the language about adaptation survived only inside a draft text , likely to be fought over again in Antalya. The United States has skipped COP31 entirely. Australia, the lead negotiator at the summit, has not announced a new multi-year climate finance pledge of its own.
Nepal’s diplomatic push at Antalya to make the Himalayas central to the agenda has also failed to materialize. With Bhutan, it had jointly proposed a “1.5 degrees Celsius Warming in Mountains” agenda, while Kyrgyzstan separately sought to institutionalize an annual dialogue on mountain climate change. Neither proposal survived the negotiations. Khanal said that major negotiating blocs did not offer sufficient support. The COP31 presidency has offered to continue consultations on mountain-related issues at future UN climate meetings in Bonn in 2027 and 2028.
To understand what happens when the world raises its hand to help after a major disaster, look at Pakistan. After the floods in 2022, which killed 1,700 people and caused more than $30 billion in damage, international donors met in Switzerland and pledged nearly $11 billion. Nearly 90 percent of it was loans. Close to three years later, Pakistan had received less than half. “The recurring tragedies highlight Pakistan’s woeful disaster preparedness, as lofty climate funding pledges from advanced, higher-emitting countries and multilateral donors fail to materialize,” Bloomberg reported at the time.
None of this means Nepal’s demands are wrong. The problem is the plan behind them. The National Adaptation Plan lists 64 priority programs that will cost $47.4 billion by 2050 — and Nepal expects to pay only $1.5 billion of that itself. Its climate pledge to the UN works the same way: of a $73.74 billion bill, 85 percent is expected to come from abroad. Both of these ambitious plans depend on a huge amount of money that conferences like Antalya have rarely been able to deliver on.
Then there are elements Nepal controls that tell their own story. The country’s 2019 climate change policy commits at least 80 percent of international climate finance to local implementation, but the mechanism for getting it there has never been made clear. Over three decades, Nepal’s governments have spent only about 60 percent of the money they budget for development projects each year. Last fiscal year they spent less than half.
Geologist Mike Searle pointed to the Miteri bridge on the Rasuwa border, which was washed away in 2025. It was rebuilt in January 2026 and destroyed again in August. Most of the deaths, Searle argued, came from people living along the riverbanks, where no one should have been allowed to build.
That is one of the several negotiating items missing in Antalya. The next monsoon is less than seven months away, and there are key decisions that have yet to be made after the floods in August. Where should houses go back up along the Trishuli, for example, or which roads should get an exception for cutting into which mountain slopes? And does a local government have the money and authority to say no?
Maheshwar Dhakal, Nepal’s environment ministry’s alternate member on FRLD’s board, told Kathmandu Post the aim is for all of the $20 million to reach the local level. In four months, the board will hold its next major meeting in Nepal.
By the time the FRLD board meets, the question will no longer be how much money the world has promised. It will be how much of the $20 million has reached Rasuwa — and how much has Nepal spent of its own.
Anup Kaphle is the Group Editorial Director of Kantipur Media Group. He previously served as the editor-in-chief of Rest of World in New York, where he led award-winning coverage of technology's impact in the emerging markets. He has spent nearly two decades in U.S. newsrooms covering international affairs and national security, including roles at The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News and The Atlantic.
