There are currently 197 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They meet annually at the Conference of Parties (COP) to negotiate new agreements and evaluate the actions taken to fulfil their past promises. The UNFCCC is the only international regime that looks after climate and plays a catalytic role in spurring climate actions. COP is the supreme decision-making body of the UNFCCC. The first COP was held in Berlin, Germany in 1995, and the 27th session of the COP will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November this year.

However, not all parties contribute equally to the negotiations because of their existing power differential. Multiple research projects have highlighted the dominancy of developed countries in the decision-making process over developing countries. One research has found that institutions under the UNFCCC are designed in a way that would benefit the delegations of developed countries. The characteristics of such panels are “1) They are large in size, 2) English-speaking, 3) Equipped with Western scientific and legal expertise, and 4) They have the ability to send the same negotiators year after year”.

In this article, I will assess where Nepal stands in each of them and recommend what it can do to increase its meaningful participation and bring the concerns of mountainous and least developed countries to the negotiating table at this global forum.

Delegation size

Only two delegates represented Nepal at the first COP in Berlin. They were Dr Durgesh Man Singh, then ambassador of Nepal to Belgium, and Purna Bahadur Shrestha, then deputy director general of the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. To give you a perspective, the United Kingdom and the United States delegation size at the same COP was 19 and 27, respectively. The delegation size of Nepal and the US at the last COP 26 in Glasgow was 69 and 166, respectively.

Multiple meetings are held simultaneously, and how many meetings a country can participate in depends on the size of the delegation. Small delegation means the same delegates have to attend multiple negotiations and meetings daily. Negotiations and meetings start as early as 7 in the morning and continue until late in the night, depending upon the nature of the talks. This would cause exhaustion, and negotiators may not be able to fully concentrate and comprehend the contents of the meetings and negotiations.

One of the main reasons for the small delegation size is lack of funding. The UNFCCC provides funding to developing countries that covers the travelling expenses of three state actors. There were a few delegates from the Ministry of Health and Population, and the Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers; how they would contribute to the negotiations is unclear. Therefore, the government should select only relevant delegates to perform efficiently within the resource crunch.

Western scientific knowledge and technical legal language always dominate the negotiation and decision-making process. Delegations from developed countries include top-notch economists and legal experts who always brief the negotiators on technical, legal and scientific issues. Developed countries’ delegations have all the information, skills and knowledge to bring to the negotiating table. In the absence of necessary expertise, delegations from the least developed countries act as “Jack of all and master of none”.

Analysing the delegations of Nepal at the last 26 COP meetings, the participation of experts, especially legal experts with expertise in international climate regimes and economists with a focus on climate change, was almost negligible. This raises a huge question mark over the meaningful participation of countries like Nepal in this international climate forum. One negative impact of not having experts in the delegation was not being able to establish a separate fund under the UNFCCC for “Loss and Damage”. The least developed countries are asking for funds for loss and damage beyond adaptation and mitigation. Loss and damage from climate change are those impacts that are irreversible and mostly non-tangible, like loss of culture due to changing climate. A group of developed countries led by the US opposed this “Loss and Damage”, citing insufficient scientific evidence to claim separate funds.

Sometimes, negotiators fail to agree on some issues at a single COP and end with a provision to continue at the next COP. Therefore, to fully understand the context and history of conversations and develop a personal relationship, it is essential to have consistent participation of the same negotiators, if not all, at least a few of them. Saleemul Haq from Bangladesh, Tony La Vina from the Philippines and Susan Biniaz from the US have consistently represented their respective countries at the COP for at least two decades. However, analysing the delegation of Nepal, I could not find a single delegate who represented Nepal at more than five COPs. One of the biggest reasons for Nepal’s high turnover of delegations is political instability, which leads to changes in the government bureaucracy with a change of political parties leading the government.

Language barrier

English is the primary language of negotiations at the COP, with limited translations in other languages, including Arabic, French, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish. Therefore, fluency in English is essential to fully engage in negotiations and meetings and understand complex legal documents. For Nepali delegates, English is their second language. If the negotiators are not fluent in English, they may not be able to articulate the nuances of their innovative ideas, find it very difficult to become persuasive and sometimes be too shy to express their opinions.

Though all these four characteristics that dominate the international climate regime benefit the developed countries, there is very little chance of the institutional reform of the UNFCCC that will help developing countries like Nepal. Therefore, Nepal should strengthen its position to have meaningful participation at the COP. To do so, in a nutshell, Nepal must include at least one or two economists with expertise in environmental and economics of climate change, and legal experts on international climate regimes. Nepal should include researchers from government think tanks like the Policy Research Institute. They can represent Nepal consistently for a long time and have people with good command of English from a pool of equally competent delegates in their delegations to the COP.