Climate Change and Nepal’s future
Nepal is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to global climate change. It ranks in the top 20 countries that have suffered the most from the impacts of climate change, through floods, forest fires, drought and other climate-induced disasters. An increase in these climate impacts would threaten Nepal’s development efforts and the lives and livelihoods of its people, particularly women and those who are poor. There is already evidence of an increase in these impacts. Government, businesses and people must act now to reduce the emissions that cause global warming (mitigation) and to ensure that the people are protected from climate events and better able to predict and respond to climate changes through effective adaptation measures.
Much of the government’s response will involve raising and spending financial resources. The Nepal Citizens Climate Budget describes the steps the government is taking to manage climate-related financial resources and presents the 2018/19 climate budget.
What is the Citizens Climate Budget— and why does Nepal need one?
Citizens, civil society organizations (CSOs), people’s representatives, parliamentarians and others must play an important part in: 1) ensuring that decisions about raising and spending money to address climate change are aligned to what people, natural systems and the economy need; 2) monitoring the implementation (how government actually collects and spends budgeted money on services and activities) of those choices; and 3) holding the government to account. To help ensure that relevant public funds are used effectively and as intended to address the potential impacts of climate change and support sustainable development, citizens and CSOs need access to budget information that they can understand and opportunities to engage in budget decision making and oversight processes.
To inform and encourage public understanding and engagement, Freedom Forum developed this Citizens Climate Budget (CCB) to present the government’s budget plans to raise and spend public money to address climate change and its effects. The CCB presents information from 2013/14 through 2018/19. This document is designed to help citizens, CSOs and journalists, as well as people’s representatives and parliamentarians and other policymakers, to understand how the government uses public finance to address climate change. The CCB can be used to facilitate dialogues about climate finance accountability at different levels of government, and it also provides evidence for stakeholders to use to engage in budgetary discussion and decisions.
