Himalayan Tragedy Exposes Moral Bankruptcy Of West-Led World

The roots of this inequality run deeper still. Institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization have imposed structural conditions that have systematically de-industrialized Nepal.

The industrial sector's contribution to GDP continues to shrink, even as Western companies capture profits from the machinery, vehicles, and aircraft Nepal must import. Nepal has been denied the right to choose its own development path; instead, it is being ensnared in a new debt trap, dressed up as“climate finance.”

Between 2011 and 2021, Nepal received approximately US$5.71 billion in climate finance. About $3 billion came from multilateral development banks-the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank-mostly as loans. The World Bank alone contributed roughly $1.7 billion; the ADB provided $1.1 billion.

Recent years have followed the same pattern: $100 million in policy loans under the GRID program, $150 million in Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Options for disaster resilience, $52 million for clean-air projects - all loans.

The ADB committed another $100 million for GRID, a grant-based loan for climate-resilient scenarios, $170 million for Kathmandu's water-supply improvements, and hundreds of millions more for irrigation projects-again, all loans. In 2025 alone, the ADB pledged roughly $709 million for mitigation and adaptation in Nepal, but most of it came as concessional loans. Nepal's foreign debt now stands at about 26% of GDP.

How is it just to make Nepal a debtor to solve a crisis it did not create? Though termed“concessional”, these instruments remain debts-principal and interest that a least-developed country must repay out of its meager development budget.

Turning climate victims into debtors is the moral bankruptcy of Western financial institutions. Those who committed the crime disguise their guilt by distributing“assistance” with strings attached: loans instead of grants, conditions instead of compensation. This is structural hypocrisy.

At the 2009 Copenhagen conference, the developed world committed to providing 100 billion USD per year in climate assistance to developing countries from 2020. Even 15 years later, it has not kept this commitment.

The Loss and Damage Fund, formed at the COP27 conference in 2022, remains underfunded and slow to make payments. However, the West managed to send more than $300 billion in weapons and other forms of support to Ukraine just a few months after the Russian“Special Military Operation.”

The meaning is clear: money and technology can be moved easily when political interests are at stake. But when the lives of poor and small countries in the Global South are threatened, the commitment remains only on paper.

Nepal's own Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 estimates that roughly $73.74 billion is needed for mitigation alone by 2035, with more than 85% dependent on international cooperation. An additional $18-20 billion is needed for adaptation-bringing the total to more than $90 billion.

Yet available finance comes predominantly as loans, compounding the debt burden and weakening adaptive capacity. This is a vicious cycle: with each disaster, Nepal grows weaker and more indebted in future.

This crisis is not unique to Nepal. Bangladesh, the Maldives, small island states and landlocked African countries all suffer the same injustice: those who did not commit the crime pay the highest price. They are punished for others' sins. Yet if these countries approach negotiations in isolation, their voices will remain faint before the Western powers.

It is time for least-developed and developing countries to form a united front and make clear demands.