KATHMANDU, Sept 21: As climate change increasingly affects Nepal’s mountains, water resources, agriculture, infrastructure, and people’s lives, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to establish a separate Climate Diplomacy Unit for the first time. According to the ministry, the new unit will be established “to further institutionalize, coordinate and make result-oriented climate diplomacy, which is linked to Nepal’s long-term national interests.” The new branch, under the Department of the United Nations and Specialized Agencies, will be headed by an under secretary. The decision can be viewed positively as an effort to institutionalize and make more effective Nepal’s international diplomatic initiatives on climate and environmental issues.
But as the government announces the creation of this new branch, another question has become even more relevant and urgent: How much is Nepal actually strengthening its institutional capacity to confront the broader climate crisis?
Climate change is not the responsibility of any single ministry. The Climate Change Management Division under the Ministry of Forests and Environment serves as Nepal’s focal point for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Foreign Aid Division under the Ministry of Finance is also linked to climate finance. The ministries responsible for energy, agriculture, water resources, home affairs, health, tourism, and physical infrastructure are directly connected to climate risks. There are also separate institutional structures for disaster management and risk reduction.
For Nepal, therefore, the problem is not a lack of institutions. The real question is how effectively the existing institutions exercise their authority, access resources, carry political weight, and coordinate with one another—and how much duplication exists in their responsibilities. As new institutions and branches are added, the question becomes even more complicated: Is Nepal simultaneously establishing clear relationships of authority, resources, responsibilities, and accountability among the many institutions working in fragmented ways? Government officials themselves acknowledge that the expected level of cooperation and coordination has not been achieved.
An active role for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is essential for international negotiations and diplomatic initiatives on climate finance, technology transfer, adaptation, mitigation, and climate-related loss and damage. Nepal must effectively raise its climate concerns and priorities in international forums. Advocacy and presentations based on scientific facts and evidence are particularly important.
Police units return in Lalitpur, beat restored in Dang
Nepal must develop the diplomatic capacity to translate its ground-level evidence into international climate discussions, financing, and policy decisions. At the same time, Nepal should play a leading role on mountain-related issues.
However, successful international diplomacy also requires strong domestic institutional capacity. When Nepal engages with international and bilateral partners or participates in climate negotiations, the answers to questions about how the country should present its positions must come from scientific and policy information generated through the Ministries of Forests and Environment, Energy, Agriculture, Water Resources, Finance, and Disaster Management, as well as research institutions. If different ministries have different priorities on the same issue, Nepal’s negotiating capacity cannot be strong.
This brings the question back into sharp focus: Does Nepal need a powerful central institutional mechanism for climate change, or should it continue the practice of adding branches and divisions across different ministries?
Given the multidimensional nature of the climate crisis, it is not enough to confine climate change to the limited jurisdiction of the Ministry of Forests and Environment. There has been discussion in the past about establishing a separate Ministry of Climate Change. Experts have repeatedly argued that Nepal needs a powerful mechanism capable of bringing climate policy, science, finance, development planning, and diplomacy together under a single national strategy. Such a mechanism would not necessarily take away the authority of the concerned ministries. Rather, as experts have suggested, it should help mobilize their respective capacities and responsibilities in a common direction.
The practices of other South Asian countries provide ample grounds for Nepal to examine this question. Pakistan has a separate Ministry of Climate Change, with dedicated structures for climate finance and international cooperation. The Maldives has placed climate change, environment, and energy under a single ministry. Bangladesh has brought environment, forests, and climate change under one ministry. India operates through a powerful Climate Change Division within its Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Bhutan has established a high-level National Environment Commission to coordinate environment and climate issues across sectors.
Looking at these examples, it is not possible to draw a single conclusion about which institutional model Nepal should adopt. But these practices raise an important question: Within which state mechanism can climate change have a real influence on policy, budgets, science, and diplomacy? Along with a capable bureaucracy, political will and leadership capacity are equally necessary. An honest review of Nepal’s existing institutional arrangements is therefore needed.
The devastating recent floods in the Bhotekoshi–Trishuli region have demonstrated that a disaster is not merely a local event. The condition of glaciers and glacial lakes, cross-border information sharing, weather forecasting, early-warning systems, disaster management, infrastructure security, and international cooperation are all links in the same chain. Therefore, if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to establish a climate diplomacy branch in the aftermath of the Bhotekoshi floods, it should not be seen merely as a response to an immediate incident. The issue must go far beyond that.
The success of Nepal’s climate diplomacy cannot be measured by the number of international conferences it attends or the number of statements it delivers at international negotiations. Its real outcome will be reflected in how much finance Nepal can mobilize for climate adaptation, how much technology it can secure for mitigation, and how much international support it can obtain to address climate-related loss and damage. Equally important is how Nepal establishes its presence and leadership on broader climate issues and, particularly, on mountain-related concerns. Previous governments had also decided to establish a permanent team for climate negotiations, but that decision was never effectively implemented.
Nepal has a huge need for climate finance. The country is not in a position to bear the rising costs of climate mitigation and adaptation through domestic resources alone. Climate diplomacy must therefore be focused and proactive in securing international climate finance, concessional financing, technology transfer, and support for addressing loss and damage.
For the immediate future, the new unit could be a beginning in that direction. But if it is reduced to merely adding another administrative layer, its rationale will become weaker. The government should now begin a broader debate on how to make overall climate governance integrated, empowered, and results-oriented, rather than simply adding more branches. The focus should be on how to strengthen the country’s overall institutional capacity and make it more effective.
Nepal therefore does not need more institutions for climate change. It needs an integrated national mechanism with clear authority, adequate resources, scientific capacity, and strong international diplomatic capability. The time has come for a serious debate and appropriate decisions in that direction.
