The board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will decide on Thursday on whether to “provisionally set aside” $20 million for Nepal to deal with some of the effects of the climate-driven flood it suffered in August.
The motion, seen by Climate Home News, has been drafted by a group of board members from both developed and developing countries and so is likely to pass easily at the fund’s first-ever extraordinary board meeting on October 22.
It invites the government of Nepal to submit a proposal for how to use the money, with the board then deciding at one of its regular board meetings whether to approve the proposal or not.
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The board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will decide on Thursday on whether to “provisionally set aside” $20 million for Nepal to deal with some of the effects of the climate-driven flood it suffered in August.
The motion, seen by Climate Home News, has been drafted by a group of board members from both developed and developing countries and so is likely to pass easily at the fund’s first-ever extraordinary board meeting on October 22.
It invites the government of Nepal to submit a proposal for how to use the money, with the board then deciding at one of its regular board meetings whether to approve the proposal or not.
While Nepali officials have described $20 million as merely “symbolic” in the face of the $4.8 billion estimated costs of recovery and reconstruction, it would be the first time the new FRLD – agreed in 2022, months after devastating floods in Pakistan – has set aside money for a specific disaster.
Until now the fund has only taken requests through a single call for proposals, launched at COP30 in Belém last November, that gave countries six months to submit requests.
Most of the 180 projects the FRLD is currently considering are designed to help countries avoid damage from future climate disasters, for example by strengthening responses to floods in Bangladesh and Lagos.
The draft decision says Nepal’s proposal will serve as a pilot for how funding requests can be submitted outside of the fund’s current timetable. That could let governments seek funds quickly after a climate disaster strikes, rather than waiting for the next call.
This arrangement would set the fund apart from other United Nations funds designed for climate adaptation or cutting emissions like the Green Climate Fund.
Climate campaigners from Fill the Fund said the draft decision is “a real step forward” as it is “the first time this Fund has moved to respond to a specific disaster”.
Too little, too late
The FRLD was agreed by governments at COP27, set up and operationalised at COP28 in 2023 but has yet to award any money. The 180 funding requests it is currently considering would cost around $2.8 billion, but it only has $350 million to allocate.
The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has described the amount of money available in the fund as “ridiculously small” and Fill the Fund said $20 million “is a meaningful signal but it is a drop against an ocean of need”.
A glacial rock and ice collapse sent a torrent of water and debris through Nepal and the Chinese-administered region of Tibet on August 26. It killed more than 1,400 people, left thousands more missing and destroyed homes, bridges, roads and hydropower plants. Nepal’s finance and environment ministers quickly appealed to the FRLD board for funds, saying that “time is of the essence”.
Their call was followed swiftly by a letter from developing country FRLD board members urging the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary meeting to allocate funds to Nepal.
But developed countries initially called for an informal consultation rather than a full board meeting. It took a further 45 days for the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary board meeting for October 22 and to draft a motion for adoption.
Fill the Fund called for a permanent way for the FRLD to respond rapidly to disasters, as “Nepal should not have required historic letters, an informal drafting group and the Fund’s first-ever extraordinary meeting simply to unlock an emergency response. The next country cannot wait two months and a bureaucratic marathon. Speed must be built in, not improvised.”
