Nepalese medical workers at a disaster scene. [Reuters]
Nepalese medical workers at a disaster scene. [Reuters]

Nepal, devastated by catastrophic flooding, has announced it will seek climate reparations from the world's top greenhouse gas emitters — the United States, China and India.

Foreign Minister Sishir Kanel said in an interview with Kantipur TV on Monday that Nepal would shift from appealing for humanitarian aid to demanding compensation. "This is not a matter of charity — it is a matter of legal and moral responsibility," he said, according to the Kathmandu Post.

Kanel described the disaster as a "Himalayan tsunami," saying waves 20 to 30 meters high had surged at 180 kilometers per hour. "It was a disaster moving at the speed of a tornado, on a scale that exists nowhere in the memory of the Nepalese people," he said.

"We are paying the harshest price for a global crisis we did not create," Kanel said, adding that rapid glacial melting and destructive mountain tsunamis were "a direct consequence of global climate change."

He directly named the countries he held responsible: China, the world's largest emitter; the United States, the second largest; and India, the third. "Major industrial nations bear a historic responsibility to compensate climate-vulnerable countries like Nepal," he said.

[AFP]
[AFP]

Kanel said the Finance Ministry had sent formal climate compensation claim letters to international partners. The government also requested emergency fiscal support from the Loss and Damage Fund.

"We will raise this issue firmly and clearly at every international forum going forward," he said.

The full scale of damage from the flooding is still being tallied. Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed, with schools and public facilities also suffering heavy losses. Kanel said reconstruction costs could run into the billions of dollars.

Nepal has also requested rescue equipment, including heavy-lift drones, technology to locate people buried under debris, forensic identification kits for the deceased and refrigeration units for storing bodies.

The disaster began Wednesday when a glacier collapsed in the Himalayas along the Nepal-China border. At least 1,003 people have been killed and about 4,500 remain missing, according to an AFP tally.

The missing include pilgrims and tourists who had traveled to Mount Kailash in Tibet, as well as workers at hydropower construction sites. Nine South Koreans are among the missing — six employees of Doosan Enerbility and three from Korea South-East Power.


dbsdn1110@heraldcorp.com