Kathmandu: The COP30 Global Climate Action Agenda outcome report, released on 21 November 2025, represents an important turning point in global climate governance. The conference, which took place in Belém, Brazil, from 10–21 November 2025, brought together world leaders, including Nepal’s President Ramchandra Paudel.
As the highest decision-making authority under the UNFCCC, the COP convenes all Parties to review how the Convention and other instruments are being implemented, while also making the necessary decisions to ensure effective and efficient execution of climate commitments.
During COP30, Parties assessed the progress made under existing climate obligations and introduced more robust frameworks for mitigation, adaptation, and resilience efforts. The Climate Action Agenda is organised around six thematic axes: energy and industrial transition; biodiversity and ecosystems; food systems; cities and water resilience; human and social development; and a cross-cutting axis addressing finance, technology, and capacity-building. Hundreds of voluntary initiatives and coalitions were streamlined into a new “activation cycle” intended to accelerate measurable global climate action.
Axis 5 Fostering Human and Social Development highlights the need for climate strategies to directly enhance human well-being by safeguarding public health, strengthening social protection, expanding skill development, and preserving cultural heritage. Since climate change is intensifying global inequalities—particularly for populations already experiencing poverty, exclusion, and limited public services—its impacts in the form of extreme weather, displacement, rising temperatures, and food insecurity weaken the foundations of human development.
COP30 places human-centred climate action at the core of resilience-building. It emphasizes improving health systems, broadening social protection mechanisms, investing in green skills, and supporting vulnerable groups. These principles align closely with Nepal’s constitutional guarantees, particularly Article 30, which affirms the right to a clean and healthy environment and calls for measures that prevent environmental harm. Based on the report, several gap areas for Nepal have been identified. The following major concerns have been raised in the COP 30 on the basis of Axis 5 Fostering Human and Social Development.
Resilient Health Systems
The Belém Health Plan integrates climate science into public health systems through early-warning mechanisms, climate-informed surveillance, and equitable service delivery. Global examples, including the Cool Cities Accelerator and the WHO–WMO Climate and Health Joint Programme, demonstrate the movement toward climate-responsive health governance. Although Nepal has initiated some climate-related health actions, the country still lacks clear, dedicated budget lines for climate-health programs and has limited integration of early-warning systems into health services. Strengthening surveillance, ensuring stable climate-health financing, and expanding local capacity remain key needs.
Climate-Resilient Social Protection and Smallholder Finance
The Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Human-Centered Climate Action—endorsed by 43 countries and the EU—directly connects climate policies to poverty reduction. Global initiatives such as the Race to Resilience show how locally-led adaptation has strengthened resilience for more than 437 million people. In Nepal, however, social protection systems are only partially responsive to climate shocks. While programs like the Social Security Fund, Disaster Relief Funds, and Poverty Alleviation initiatives exist, they lack clear mechanisms for rapid climate-triggered assistance; disbursements remain slow and climate index insurance coverage is minimal. Smallholder farmers face limited access to climate finance, and blended finance systems are still underdeveloped. Stronger climate and disaster insurance mechanisms are needed to safeguard vulnerable smallholders.
Green Skills, Jobs, and Just Transition
The Global Initiative for Jobs & Skills for the New Economy aims to embed workforce development into climate strategies, placing special emphasis on women, youth, entrepreneurship, and clean-technology innovation. However, in Nepal, training programs are scattered and uncoordinated, and there is no national green-skills strategy backed by adequate investment. A structured plan for green jobs, including sector-specific reskilling and targeted youth/women programs, is urgently needed.
Education, Higher Learning, and Climate Empowerment
Global networks of higher education institutions are expanding their climate action efforts, with more than 1,300 universities expected to be engaged by 2027. This global shift aligns with the Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) framework. In Nepal, climate education receives insufficient funding and is not well integrated into the national curriculum. ACE implementation remains limited. Climate change courses need to be mainstreamed at school and university levels, supported by dedicated funding, and complemented by international scholarship opportunities.
Cultural Heritage and Climate Adaptation
A growing number of countries are incorporating cultural heritage into their National Adaptation Plans, and initiatives like the Heritage Adapts Coalition aim to protect thousands of sites and cultural practices. Although Nepal has taken some steps to safeguard cultural heritage, it lacks dedicated financing and has not integrated cultural heritage adaptation into its national planning processes. Opportunities exist to elevate Nepal’s cultural heritage on global platforms.
Nepal’s Constitution provides strong legal foundations for implementing COP30 Axis 5, including environmental rights (Article 30), health rights (Article 35), education (Article 31), social security (Article 43), cultural rights (Article 32), and state policies promoting environmental protection and socioeconomic equality.
National Context and Priorities in Nepal’s 2025/26 Budget Speech
The 2025/26 budget emphasizes encouraging agricultural production on fallow lands along major highways, with funding allocated for expanding cash crops, livestock, high-value fruits, non-timber forest products, grasses, and agroforestry systems. The budget acknowledges that climate change is increasingly affecting agriculture, water supply, irrigation, and related sectors. It also highlights challenges such as inadequate digital infrastructure, mismatched labor skills, reliance on foreign workers in construction and industry, and ongoing high levels of poverty.
To attract youth to agriculture, the government intends to build a comprehensive ecosystem that includes access to land, inputs, insurance, purchase agreements, and market support. Agricultural research will be made more results-oriented and aligned with climate and farming systems, with increased private sector participation in seed development and intellectual property registration.
The budget also prioritizes forest conservation and sustainable use of forest products, ensuring that commercial utilization does not harm biodiversity. Programs related to environmental protection will address melting mountains, shrinking glaciers, and broader ecosystem impacts. Nepal plans to advocate for climate justice in international forums, improve access to climate finance, implement the Sagarmatha Sambaad commitments, and integrate climate adaptation programs at provincial and local levels.
Communities will be encouraged to grow and protect fruits, herbs, and high-value plants in community forests and along national highways. A Fruit Forest Program will be implemented in collaboration with local communities. Clear policy guidelines will be developed for carbon trading, and preparations will be made to sell carbon credits internationally at competitive prices through accurate accounting.
Integrated watershed management will be prioritized to sustain water cycles in the Chure and Tarai-Madhesh regions. Programs for conserving wetlands and gorges, restoring forests, and increasing water recharge will be implemented, supported by an allocation of NPR 1.69 billion. To address drying water sources caused by climate change and urbanization, the budget includes initiatives such as reservoir-based drinking water systems, groundwater recharge, and revival of natural springs.
For FY 2025/26, the government has allocated NPR 18.61 billion to the Ministry of Forests and Environment, NPR 12.9 billion specifically for environment and conservation, and NPR 1.69 billion for Chure and Tarai-Madhesh watershed conservation.
Access to Multilateral Climate Funds for Nepal
Multiple multilateral climate funds are available to support climate action, and Nepal is well-positioned to access them. Climate finance includes all funding that supports mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage responses at local, national, or international levels. This funding—totalling USD 1.9 trillion globally in 2023—is expected to surpass USD 2 trillion in 2024.
Adaptation Fund (AF): The AF’s framework documents offer support for social protection programming by requiring proposals to provide economic and social benefits, especially for vulnerable communities
Climate Investment Funds (CIF): The CIF piloted adaptive social protection successfully through the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and is now generating valuable lessons that informed the design of the new Accelerating Resilience Investments and Innovations for Sustainable Economies (ARISE) programme
Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD): Dedicated to assisting particularly vulnerable developing countries, the FRLD has the potential to be an important vehicle for social protection activities in the face and aftermath of extreme weather events and slow onset processes
Global Environment Facility (GEF): For first time, the GEF explicitly recognises social protection in its draft GEF-9 strategy for the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) and Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), highlighting it as one of the key approaches in delivering support.
Green Climate Fund (GCF): The GCF has an adaptation and mitigation mandate and supports a growing number of projects using social protection instruments. The fund’s criteria are aligned closely with social protection goals
Proposals must be submitted through accredited entities and are available only to countries recognized as vulnerable under the Kyoto Protocol or Paris Agreement.
Nepal benefits from a strong constitutional foundation for environmental and social protection rights, increasing political commitment to climate budgeting, active engagement with global climate funds, robust community-based natural resource management, and high youth participation in climate initiatives. Although Nepal faces notable gaps—such as limited climate-health financing, weak EWS-health integration, lack of a national Loss and Damage facility, fragmented green-skills initiatives, underfunded climate education, and inadequate cultural heritage adaptation—significant opportunities exist to accelerate progress toward COP30 Axis 5 goals.
The writer is a Practitioner on Society Climate Justice– RSS
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