Nepal’s leader tells UN recent floods are a ‘warning to the world’

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Prime Minister Balendra Shah told the UN general assembly in New York that the disaster in August “was not just a local tragedy. It was a warning to the world. And I ask you today: Have you really heard that warning?

“Nearly three years ago, standing in the shadow of our Mount Everest, the secretary-general of the United Nations warned humanity about the madness and impending climate disaster.”

He said: “That cry from the rooftop of the world was not heard enough.”

“We in Nepal heard it. Our communities heard it. Scientists around the world heard it. 

“They repeated it with evidence. But we, the political leaders, have been negligent in translating those warnings into action at the speed and scale that the vulnerable people require.”

Mr Shah said that Nepal contributed less than one-tenth of 1 per cent of the heat-trapping gases behind climate change. About 99 per cent of Nepal’s electricity comes from hydropower, and many workers were trapped in tunnels by the flooding.

He said: “We did not create this crisis, yet we are paying a colossal price for it.”