The annual UN climate change conference (COP-30) this year will be held in Belém, Brazil, from 10 to 21 November 2025. The conference will be preceded by pre-sessions from 4 to 9 November and a leaders’ summit on 6–7 November. Nepal has long been attending these conferences through a high-level delegation usually led either by the head of state (COP-24, Poland; COP-29, Baku) or the head of government. However, this year Nepal plans to send a ministerial-level delegation, led by the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Development.
Though there are logistical and transportation challenges due to poor transportation links and a lack of affordable hotels, the venue of COP-30—Belém—symbolizes the intersection of global climate challenges: forests, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights. Similarly, the timing is important as this COP will be held at the critical juncture of the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. In Paris in 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above “pre-industrial” levels of the late 1800s and to keep it “well below” 2°C.
The value of the conference lies in the level of participation from countries (parties), especially from those that are the biggest emitters. It is still unclear what form the US delegation will take. It should be noted that shortly after his inauguration in January 2025, President Trump vowed to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Sources say that China, the world’s biggest emitter of planet-warming gases, is expected to send a delegation, but President Xi Jinping is not likely to be there. Similarly, India is less likely to send a prime ministerial-level delegation due to the Bihar election, where the ruling NDA led by PM Narendra Modi is said to be struggling with its opponents. Previous summits have been criticized for the large number of attendees connected to the coal, oil, and gas industries, which campaigners argue shows the ongoing influence of fossil fuel advocates.
Nepal’s Positions and Asks – We Need Commitment
Nepal’s positions and asks are based on the Sagarmatha Sambaad (held on 16–18 May 2025 in Kathmandu), several rounds of consultation meetings with stakeholders including CSOs and youth, and the recent surge in climate-induced disasters that ravaged the country in 2024 and 2025, increasing loss and damage and highlighting slow progress on climate finance mobilization.
Climate Finance
For Nepal, success in Belém means higher ambition from major emitters, credible implementation pathways, and adequate finance and support to turn global commitments into concrete action, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable nations and communities. Nepal has rightly focused on the issue of credible implementation pathways from funders, donors, and polluters, as there has been a “fashion” of making commitments but failing to implement them. A study conducted by Oxfam in 2024 found that Nepal faces significant challenges in accessing, managing, and utilizing climate finance effectively. Accessing funds is often complicated by intricate requirements of international finance mechanisms and bureaucratic processes.
In line with national priorities and agendas, Nepal has focused on financing for adaptation. It has explicitly mentioned in the position paper that the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) must be implemented with a clear commitment to deliver the $300 billion goal within the broader $1.3 trillion Baku to Belém roadmap, triple grant-based support for adaptation by 2030, and simplify access to climate finance. Nepal has noted that current global flows remain insufficient, unpredictable, and overly reliant on loans. It has categorically stated that finance must be primarily grant-based, transparent, and equitably distributed. Nepal’s position on grant-based finance is very positive, encouraging, and aligns with the aspirations of the majority of Nepali people.
While mitigation and adaptation efforts remain essential, they cannot prevent unavoidable impacts. Loss and Damage (L&D) has therefore become a critical agenda for Nepal, requiring accessible, predictable, and grant-based finance, alongside technical and institutional support. Given the interconnectedness of climate impacts across mountain-to-coastal ecosystems, Nepal also emphasizes the need for regional and transboundary cooperation. Nepal aims for COP-30 outcomes that operationalize L&D support at scale, implement the BIM (Barbados Implementation Mechanism), fully capitalize the FRLD (Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage), strengthen governance through the WIM (Warsaw International Mechanism) and the FRLD, and secure predictable public and grant-based finance. Nepal’s clear demand for public and grant-based funding reflects its current socio-economic status.
Streamlining Adaptation Indicators
COP-30 is expected to finalize a set of indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) to move from planning to implementation, which is crucial for tracking progress, mobilizing finance, and strengthening resilience. While welcoming the reduced list of initial indicators, Nepal emphasizes the need for a globally coherent, measurable, yet flexible framework that accommodates national contexts such as food and water security, disaster resilience, and mountain ecosystem health.
Mitigation
Nepal’s NDC 3.0, which is often criticized for its ambitious mitigation targets, emphasizes mitigation pathways through renewable energy, clean cooking, electric transport, cleaner industries, nature-based solutions, and resilient cities, supported by finance, technology, and capacity, while ensuring a just transition. These actions are closely linked with both the MWP (Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme) and the JTWP (Just Transition Work Programme), and hence Nepal aims for a pragmatic and inclusive MWP and JTWP that jointly speed up just and equitable climate action, support ambitious NDCs, and mobilize means of implementation.
The position paper also discusses carbon financing, which is one of the least understood and potentially contentious issues for Nepal. In line with the Sagarmatha Call for Action on carbon finance, which emphasizes the role of private sector finance and carbon markets in scaling up sustainable climate actions, the paper calls for simplified rules for LDCs, robust accounting to prevent double counting, and ITMOs (Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes) that deliver productive energy use and access, water security, and biodiversity gains. Nepal supports ecosystem-based adaptation, agroecology, spring restoration, debt swaps, and grant-based finance, alongside recognition of Indigenous knowledge and inclusive governance. Nepal stresses advancing Article 6 at COP-30 as a tool for ambition and unlocking finance, technology, and cooperation that support resilience and sustainable development, building on the draft regulation on carbon trade.
Mountains
As a mountainous country, Nepal has both the right and the obligation to raise mountain issues at the conference, which it has done consistently. Based on recommendations from the Sagarmatha Dialogue, Nepal has supported calls for establishing a dedicated fund for the development of mountain countries to mobilize targeted financial resources for climate action and sustainable development in mountainous regions. Nepal has reiterated mountains’ role in global water and climate security and appealed to global leaders for targeted attention to mountain issues, which have recently gained increasing recognition.
Climate Justice
Nepal will continue to raise the issue of climate justice at the conference, as it has in previous COPs. However, Nepal should demand justice in a way that highlights its contributions to reducing global warming. Nepal should emphasize two major contributions: (i) water towers in the form of mountains that sustain downstream communities and countries, and (ii) increasing forest cover (around 45%) that sequesters carbon generated by others. Nepal’s intention that COP-30 outcomes promote justice and inclusion in climate action, including through a 10-year Gender Action Plan, technology, and capacity building, is commendable. Nepal stresses that COP-30 outcomes should strengthen implementation of NDC 3.0 and the NAP while advancing just, equitable, and inclusive climate action.
Conclusion
While domestic consultations start late and are often donor-led, the process has very little turnaround time for in-depth discussion, internalization, and finalization of agendas. Frequent changes in government delegates can negatively impact institutional memory. On one hand, the high number of government and non-government delegates has been criticized; on the other, the quality of delegates is often questionable. Maintaining a pool of permanent delegates at the ministerial level could address this challenge. As diplomacy must go in tandem with science, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should have a greater stake in such global conferences and negotiations.
