Global warming turns up the heat on Nepal’s climate diplomacy

IN HELAMBU, in Nepal’s mountainous Sindhupalchowk district, Dawa Lama Hyolmo, a 61-year-old farmer, was working on her steep, sloping, terraced field. She dug the soil, carefully mixed in compost as fertiliser, and planted potato sprouts. “Since there hasn’t been enough snowfall this year, I’m worried about how it will grow,” she said one early morning in March. “Last year, there wasn’t enough rainfall when the potato plants needed it.” Lama was referring to climate-change induced shifts in weather patterns and how they are affecting agricultural activities in the Himalayan foothills under Mount Dorje Lhakpa, where she lives.

The same concerns were echoed by António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, when he visited Nepal in October 2023. “We must put an end to the fossil-fuel age,” Guterres said from the heart of the Himalaya. “We must act now to protect the people on the frontline,” he urged, drawing attention to the dramatic retreat of glaciers across the Himalayan range. “We cannot retreat.”