Autumn in Kathmandu this year was unseasonably warm; the response to how the government fared at the COP 27 summit, on the other hand, has been quite frosty. Following the return of the Nepali delegation from Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, the Ministry of Forest and Environment organised a review meeting to reflect on the progress made at the summit. Unfortunately, things did not pan out the way they had hoped. The minister, who had led the delegation, walked out of the meeting, blaming the bureaucratic team for failing to highlight her role and leadership at the summit. A journalist, who had also attended the summit, later reported that while COP 27 provided us with an opportunity to draw the world’s attention to losses wrought by climate change, the country’s delegation was ill-prepared and missed the chance to do so meaningfully. These events warrant some much needed soul-searching to ensure Nepal’s well prepared participation in future summits.

Climate experience

As one of the most vulnerable countries, Nepal has been an active participant in climate summits from the very beginning. Yet, we haven’t been able to rise above rhetoric in presenting ourselves despite the country’s remarkable progress in the climate arena, from realising vulnerabilities to piloting responses to enhance the resilience of the affected people. We have also made significant strides in reforming our policies and public financial systems to promote the integration of climate change in national plans. More importantly, for over a decade, Nepal has pioneered tracking climate public expenditure to understand how the state is managing available public funds in responding to the impacts across all economic sectors affected by climate change. We've also gained experience in implementing dedicated climate projects—be it in reducing the risk of glacial lake outbursts or helping communities adapt by implementing national and local adaptation plans. We've improved our weather forecasting system to an extent, enabling early warning of hazards. These moves are in addition to the requirements of submitting Nationally Determined Contributions and preparing a National Adaptation Plan.

Failing to effectively contribute at COP 27, even with our improved knowledge of climate impacts and 12 years of experience in implementing climate projects, reforms, and home-grown achievements, certainly demonstrated how we are still not ready to pull our achievements together to contribute to global dialogues effectively. The general public deserves to know what went wrong or was lacking in our preparation.

Unlike managing a crisis, where we prepare at the moment leaving plenty of room for error, preparing for an annual event such as a climate summit should be a more regular, practised phenomenon since there's a full year of advance notice.

Areas to improve

For better participation, we must work on at least four priorities. First, institutional leadership is an essential component in how a country deals with a particular problem and climate change is no exception. Since climate change is a two-pronged problem, with both domestic and global implications, states need a strong institutional setup to deal with (i) Responsibility of making people resilient and meeting global commitments to reduce emissions at home, and (ii) Making its presence felt at global fora. Leadership needs to be capable of understanding the national scenario in order to coordinate and guide domestic climate affairs and comprehend the efforts being made by other players in the region and at the global level. To this end, many countries have established dedicated ministries of climate change or have revamped their environment ministries to incorporate climate change into the very fabric of the ministry. Nepal doesn’t even have a dedicated department, let alone a ministry for climate change.

Second, it's often said that climate change is a cross-cutting issue, but we seldom pay attention to how its cross-cutting nature affects our decision-making while planning and developing interventions. Each sector, from water to forest and from agriculture to power, has its traditional way of formulating sectoral plans, but how many of them have improved these traditional ways to adapt to the context of climate change? Development paradigms have changed quite a bit in the last decades. The existing problems of water-induced disasters affecting every economic sector have been dramatically exacerbated by climate change. We never asked whether any decision-makers in the planning and budgeting agencies and units can link these changes while planning development interventions as long as we fail to link them, we will have a limited understanding of the effectiveness of our efforts.

The third, and probably the most important aspect to consider for better preparation, is regularly engaging with other regional organisations that not only deal with similar issues but also participate in the same summits with similar objectives. We must engage with these counterpart organisations in friendly countries as well as the various networks in the region consistently to share knowledge and build solidarity. A more collaborative approach will benefit our preparation efforts.

Finally, policy decisions are also political decisions; therefore, political commitment is crucial in strengthening climate-related institutions to carry climate actions on their shoulders. For instance, in 2016, the Environment Protection Committee of the erstwhile legislative Parliament also oversaw climate change. Notably, after observing the increasing cases of floods and landslides and the extent of damage caused, the committee directed the government of Nepal to immediately establish a high-level climate change institution with a strict mandate to coordinate the planning and execution of climate change actions. The directives, in effect, showed clear political commitment emphasising the need for a strong institution to address climate threats across the country. However, the government didn’t establish any such institution.

Strangely enough, the federal Parliament no longer has an Environment Protection Committee; overseeing the environment, and to some extent, climate change, is entrusted to the Agriculture, Cooperative and Natural Resource Committee. The current setup has weakened the political commitment Nepal demonstrated through its actions under the Environment Protection Committee in the legislative Parliament.

We must acknowledge that with the outcome deemed a failure on efforts to cut greenhouse emissions, COP 27 has weakened the prospect of industrialised nations agreeing to more ambitious commitments. Therefore, we can expect a substantial increase in climate-induced problems in the years ahead. Our efforts should focus on reducing risks. We've gained experience and have laid some groundwork for a coordinated and well-planned approach to deal with climate impacts. It’s time to put these ingredients together under strong institutional leadership backed by an equally committed political will to ensure that we do better at home, and prepare more effectively to contribute to the global conversation.