Nepal urges shared climate action from mountains to sea at UN event

Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal used a special event at the United Nations Headquarters on 26 September 2026 to press for coordinated international action on climate risk. The event, titled "Sagarmatha to the Sea: A Call to Action for a Climate-Resilient Future", heard him argue that mountains, rivers, seas and coastal areas belong to a single ecological system because the climate does not respect political borders. Khanal pointed to the disaster in the Langtang area on 26 August, when a large mass of rock and glacier gave way and caused heavy damage to people, property and infrastructure. According to his personal secretariat, he described that event as a "Himalayan Tsunami" and said debate on climate-related disasters can no longer be avoided. The minister said Everest and the wider Himalayan region, described as the third pole, hold the largest store of ice and snow found anywhere outside the polar regions, with more than 63,700 glaciers. Nearly a third of Nepal's ice has disappeared over the past three decades, he said, which is altering the flow of rivers and putting downstream livelihoods at risk, while island and coastal states face rising seas, erosion and displacement. He recalled that in 2023, from the foot of the Himalayas, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called the glaciers "icy reservoirs". Khanal asked governments to build the link between mountains, freshwater and oceans into science, policy and investment, to give mountains more weight in climate processes, and to speed up emissions cuts so that warming stays within 1.5 degrees Celsius. On finance, Khanal said developing countries need climate funding, technology and capacity support that is adequate, predictable and easy to reach, and that the fund for loss and damage should be effective and well resourced. He said climate justice becomes tangible when the support a country receives reflects its responsibility, capacity and risk. Nepal, he added, has forest cover on around 46 percent of its land and is expanding hydropower and electric vehicles.