As the stage is all set in Azerbaijan for COP29, Nepal has finalised its agendas to be raised in the annual world climate conference.

President Ram Chandra Paudel is scheduled to lead the Nepali delegation at the UN climate conference being held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22. 

Dr Sindhu Prasad Dhungana, Chief of the Climate Change Management Division at the Ministry of Forest and Environment, informed RSS, the state-owned news agency, that loss and damage, mountain region and climate finance would be Nepal’s top agendas in this year’s summit. 

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They were underlined in the national status paper after forming groups to collect suggestions focusing on carbon trade, climate finance, mitigation, adaptation, capacity building, gender equality, transparency and good governance, Dhungana added.

In order to draw the attention of the world to climate change impacts in Nepal , a high level session would be held under the chairmanship of President Paudel during the COP29 on November 13, reported RSS quoting the Minister for Forest and Environment Ain Bahadur Shahi Thakuri. 

Along with the devastation caused by the floods and landslides triggered by the three-day incessant rain in the last week of September, Nepal will also share the consequences of climate change it has faced in recent years in Melamchi , Mustang , Kanchanpur and Thame .

Nepal was granted permission from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for holding a separate session during the major event. UN officials, representatives from mountainous countries, and development partners among others are expected to attend the session.

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Nepal, despite having a negligible contribution to global carbon emission, is among the most vulnerable countries to the risks of climate change. 

(Women look at a damaged house, uprooted following heavy rains at a landslide-affected village in Lalitpur district on the outskirts of Kathmandu on October 1, 2024. AFP/RSS)

While the Climate Risk Index has ranked Nepal 10th among the most affected countries by climate change from 2000 to 2019, the country’s share in global carbon emission in 2022 was only 0.04 percent .   

Nepal is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, said the World Bank , adding that the country faces losing 2.2 percent of annual GDP due to climate change by 2050, citing recent studies by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

To mitigate the risks of climate change, Nepal has set some ambitious goals. The country aims to achieve net zero emission by 2045, much earlier than its neighbours China and India – who have pledged to reach climate neutrality by 2060 and 2070, respectively. 

Nepal has prioritised scaling up the production of hydroelectricity to achieve this target. 

The country’s Second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) aims to expand clean energy generation to 15,000 MW by 2030, of which 5-10 percent will be generated from mini and micro-hydro power, solar, wind and bio-energy. And to ensure the supply of 15 percent of the energy demand through clean energy sources.

Similarly, in the transport sector, the government aims to increase the shares of electric vehicles to 25 percent of all private passenger vehicles, including two-wheelers, and 20 percent of all four-wheeler public passenger vehicles, excluding electric rickshaws and electric-tempos, by 2025. By 2030, the goal is to increase such shares to 90 percent and 60 percent, respectively.

The targets have also been set to install 500,000 improved cookstoves, specifically in rural areas, and install an additional 200,000 household biogas plants and 500 large scale biogas plants by 2025.  

Likewise, the government also targets to develop 200 km of the electric rail network to support public commuting and mass transportation of goods, to ensure 25 percent of households use electric stoves as their primary mode of cooking by 2030. 

(A woman carries her belongings in the affected area of monsoon flooding in Roshi village of Nepal's Kavre district on September 30, 2024. AFP/RSS)

However, the estimated cost of achieving Nepal's NDC conditional mitigation targets is estimated to be $25 billion and that of the unconditional targets to be $3.4 billion. 

Additionally, Nepal’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) has identified a total of 64 priority programmes. The total estimated budget for their implementation until 2050 is $47.4 billion, of which Nepal would contribute $1.5 billion, requiring external support totaling $45.9 billion. The government requires $2.1 billion annually for the delivery of adaptation services through the implementation of NAP for the medium term.

Based on several international commitments, it is estimated that Nepal needs about $77 billion to implement adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development targets by 2030, according to the Nepal Green Finance Taxonomy recently issued by the Nepal Rastra Bank. 

The taxonomy is a guideline to promote investments aimed at mitigating climate change, improving climate adaptation and resilience, and fostering a sustainable economy.  

Dhungana further informed that the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) would hold discussions on November 5-6, while G77+China will meet on November 9-10.  

Similarly, Bimal Regmi, Member of the Environment Conservation and Climate Change Management Council, told RSS that Nepal should raise current issues of national interest and needs where the Himalaya comes on top.

(It took just moments for freezing floodwaters to engulf Thame in the foothills of Mount Everest, a disaster that climate change scientists say is an ominous sign of things to come in the Himalayan nation. Photo: AFP/RSS)

As a party to UNFCCC, Nepal has been continuously attending COP, preparing national adaptation plans, sharing climate ambitions and reminding the industrialised countries to pay heed to the urgency of climate change in least developed and poor countries.

One of the key agendas of this year’s conference is a fund, proposed by Azerbaijan, that intends to raise money for developing countries through donations from fossil fuel producing countries and companies, AFP reported in September . 

Azerbaijan – wedged between Iran and Russia and heavily dependent on fossil fuels – is expected to make the first contribution to this so-called "climate finance action fund". The fund needs $1 billion and 10 countries as shareholders to launch.

This year's summit in Baku is also supposed to agree on how much developing countries need to adapt to a warming planet, and where that money should come from.

This target will replace the $100 billion that wealthy countries agreed to pay in climate aid, every year, from 2020. That amount was only reached for the first time in 2022, and has long been criticised as grossly inadequate.

(With inputs from AFP and RSS)