Nepal floods should mobilise climate action, says UN green fund chief

Nepal's flood disaster and Europe's wildfires should turn attention to the cost of climate change, the head of the world's biggest climate fund said in an interview on Wednesday.

Mafalda Duarte, executive director of the UN's multi-billion-dollar Green Climate Fund, said many countries do not understand the world faces tipping points from which it cannot go back.

"We see globally climate change dropping in terms of priorities, with other things — conflicts and shocks — taking priority," she told AFP. "We see when there is will, that finance is mobilised to respond to emergencies. For some reason, we don't see the same type of response to climate — as if we can afford to wait."

Mafalda Duarte poses for pictures after an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Koror. AFP

The Green Climate Fund was established by the UN to help developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change, and has invested $19 billion across 134 developing countries.

The US withdrew from the fund in January, and Britain halved its contribution in May.

The devastation caused by the Nepal flood disaster should return political focus to climate change, Duarte said.

"I would hope that this, plus the heatwaves this summer, plus the wildfires ... These things are now happening everywhere. This is not a phenomenon of developing countries," she said, referencing the deadly fires and heatwave in across Europe.

Soldiers work during a search and rescue operation outside a tunnel near the Hydropower Project sites, following deadly flash floods. Reuters

Duarte is in Palau for the annual summit of Pacific island leaders, who see climate change as their biggest security threat.

Pacific governments reacted with dismay on Wednesday to a UN report that found the world would fail to limit global warming to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels, hastening climate impacts.
"It always surprises me as to how we can have so much information, and can act so little," she said. "We cannot give up hope," she added.

This aerial photograph shows Om Bahadur (front C), sitting on the ledge of his damaged house, a week after the devastating flash floods at Baireni. AFP

The fund is increasing its work on adaptation in the Pacific, and has doubled its investment in the region in three years to $1 billion.

Acknowledging there is frustration among small countries accessing the fund, Duarte said the process has sped up to an average nine months.

Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege, the Pacific's envoy for COP31, said on Wednesday that "urgent and concrete" progress was needed to improve access to climate finance for small island states.

She said a separate UN "loss and damage" fund, agreed four years ago to help developing nations respond to climate disasters, was "an empty bucket."

Agence France-Presse