Urja Khabar
Kathmandu: ADB aims to enhance climate finance to strengthen climate resilience in Hindu Kush Himalayas. As Asia and the Pacific’s climate bank, ADB aims to provide $100 billion in climate financing from its own resources from 2019 to 2030, including $34 billion for adaptation.
In 2022, ADB committed $7.1 billion of climate finance, including $4.3 billion for mitigation and $2.8 billion for adaptation. The bank mobilized an additional $548 million in climate finance from the private sector last year. To address climate crisis and disaster risks in Hindu Kush Himalaya region the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has launched an initiative, through which the bank will provide support to the region which stayed as a critical water tower supporting the livelihoods of more than a billion of people across Asia.
ADB will undertake deep analysis of multi-hazard risks which include landslides, earthquakes, and floods—including from glacier lake outbursts—and vulnerabilities in Bhutan and Nepal with technical assistance.
This will help to strengthen the two governments’ capacities to conduct risk assessments in priority river basins. These assessments will be used to develop early warning systems and risk management options for future infrastructure development.
Home to the largest ice reserves outside of the Polar Regions, the Hindu Kush Himalayas feed 10 major rivers which sustain the livelihoods of 240 million people in the mountains and more than 1.6 billion people downstream. The region is warming faster than the global average and if global temperature rises hit 3°C, 75% of glaciers in Bhutan and Nepal could melt by the end of this century. That would place unprecedented stress on access to water, threaten food and energy security, and result in significant biodiversity loss.
“The roof of the world is melting,” said ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa. “The Hindu Kush Himalayas region is critical to the well-being and economic security of more than a billion people across our region. This assistance will help equip Bhutan and Nepal with essential information and enable them to invest in effective climate adaptation—which is now critical to managing climate risk.”
From 1985 to 2014, economic losses resulting from disasters in the Hindu Kush Himalayas region totaled $45 billion, much higher than those of any other mountain region. Since then, the increasing frequency and intensity of disaster events have killed or displaced thousands of people and pushed up economic losses by such events.
“We must urgently ensure that finance is flowing into climate adaptation projects,” said ADB Principal Economist Declan Magee. “This requires high quality and dynamic assessments of climate and disaster risks that account for multiple hazards that can have impacts across borders.”
ADB’s assistance will help the governments, private sector, and local communities to understand the risks they face so they can decide on disaster risk reduction and adaptation measures, as well as risk transfer solutions including insurance. The technical assistance will set the stage for advancing knowledge across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region on climate resilient investment planning, development, and risk management.
