Nepal: thousands still missing as flood recovery begins

# Analysis Nepal's catastrophic flooding exposes a structural inequity in global climate financing: nations least responsible for emissions face the steepest reconstruction bills with the fewest resources to pay them. The $4.8 billion cost represents a devastating proportion of Nepal's annual GDP, forcing the government to choose between rebuilding critical infrastructure and funding schools and hospitals—a calculus that wealthier nations rarely confront after disasters. The thousands still unaccounted for also underscore how climate impacts disproportionately harm developing countries lacking early warning systems, evacuation resources, and resilient infrastructure that wealthier nations take for granted. This disaster will likely intensify pressure on wealthy countries at COP negotiations to increase climate reparations funding, but only if Nepal's recovery needs are treated as a test case for whether the international community will actually fund adaptation in vulnerable nations, or merely express sympathy while shifting responsibility back to governments already stretched to their breaking point.