Nepal facing climate change-induced risks: Minister Sharma

Kathmandu: Minister for Finance Janardan Sharma said Nepal was one of the most vulnerable countries in the world in view of climate change due to climate-dependent economy and limited adaptation capacity.

In his address to the second Green Climate Fund Programming Conference held in Incheon of South Korea on Tuesday, he said Nepal was gradually grappling with crisis due to climate change. The conference that kicked off today will conclude on Thursday.

With the rise in global warming, incidents of natural calamities have increased, glacial lakes were bursting out and frequency of floods and landslides was also on the rise, he said.

Despite negligible contributions to the global emission of Green House Gases, the least developed countries are bearing the brunt of negative impact of the climate change, the minister added.

“As a member-nation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Nepal has actively advanced its efforts and engagement in the global fight against climate change”, he shared.

On the occasion, Minister Sharma further noted that all countries should come up with concrete measures to reduce GHG emission so as to limit the rise of global temperature to an average of 1.5 Degree Celsius.

The minister also informed that Nepal, as an ambitious climate change stakeholder, has devised numerous plans to enhance the climate change resilient capacity.

The National Climate Change Policy, 2019 has explicitly set the goal of building climate resilient society and thereby contributing to the social-economic prosperity of the country.

In materializing the goal, the national policy has taken several sub-policies, strategies and working measures in the key thematic areas of climate change, the finance minister.

He further shared that Nepal had already signed the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC. Nepal has set a target to become net zero emission country by 2045, he said, adding that the country has adopted a policy to spend at least 80 percent of the climate finance to respond to the negative impacts of climate change.