As world leaders gather at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, the world’s most vulnerable nations are demanding climate justice — and accountability from those responsible for the crisis.
For Nepal, the devastating floods in August exposed the growing injustice facing countries that contribute the least to global emissions, yet bear the greatest costs. Nepal’s Environment Minister Gita Chaudhary says that with billions of dollars needed to rebuild, loss and damage funding must “be provided as a grant, not as a loan”.
And as melting Himalayan glaciers threaten water supplies for nearly two billion people across South Asia, the region’s COP30 Special Envoy Arunabha Ghosh says current climate finance mechanisms are “completely inadequate, both in scale and in geographic scope” — and that forcing vulnerable nations into debt to rebuild is “unjust”.
