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On 26 August 2026, a massive ice-and-rock avalanche in the high Himalaya fell into the Lhende valley, temporarily blocked the river and released a destructive surge of water, rock, ice and sediment into Nepal's Bhotekoshi–Trishuli–Narayani river system. Preliminary reports suggest that a roughly 600-metre-wide mass fell about 1,200 metres from an altitude of approximately 5,200 metres. As of 5 September, Nepal reported 1,344 bodies recovered, around 5,000 people missing and 13,098 rescued. The final human and economic loss will be known only after the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment.

In an interview published on 1 September, Nepal's Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said Nepal was shifting from “aid” to “justice and compensation”, referred to China, the United States and India as major emitters, and said a formal claim letter had been sent to international partners. He subsequently clarified that Nepal had not demanded compensation from any specified country. Its official position is to seek support from the international community through the UN climate framework and it has written to the Co-Chairs of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. This clarification matters by showing that Nepal has advanced a climate-justice demand, not a quantified interstate damages case.

On What Legal Basis Can Nepal Seek Support under the UN Climate Framework?

Nepal speaks as an injured sovereign State, a very small emitter with a fragile mountain ecosystem, also a developing country recognised under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As of August 2026, it remains a Least Developed Country (LDC), with graduation to the next level scheduled for 24 November 2026, although Nepal has requested an extension to 2029. It is also a developing country expressly recognised to be financially supported under Article 4(8) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Articles 3 and 4 of the UNFCCC embody equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Article 4(4) requires developed-country parties to assist particularly vulnerable developing countries in meeting adaptation costs. Articles 4(8) and 4(9) expressly recognise fragile mountain ecosystems and the special needs of LDCs.

The Paris Agreement separately recognises loss and damage under Article 8. Article 9(1) requires developed-country parties to provide climate finance, while Article 9(2) merely encourages other parties to contribute voluntarily.

The framework, however, contains a negotiated limitation. Paragraph 51 of Decision 1/CP.21, which adopted the Paris Agreement, states that Article 8 does not provide a basis for “liability or compensation”. The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage is therefore a cooperative financing mechanism for vulnerable developing countries, not a tribunal that determines legal fault or awards damages. These instruments support Nepal's access to finance, technology and cooperation, but do not themselves generate a damages claim against particular States.

A separate and potentially stronger legal foundation lies in customary international law, which makes Nepal's claim stronger. In its 2025 Advisory Opinion, Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change, the International Court of Justice held that States must exercise due diligence to prevent significant harm to the climate system and must cooperate. Failure adequately to regulate private emissions, fossil-fuel licensing or subsidies may constitute an internationally wrongful act. If breach and causation are established, the ordinary law of State responsibility permits cessation, assurances of non-repetition and full reparation, including compensation.

Have similar demands succeeded?

There is still no international judgment ordering a major-emitting State to compensate a vulnerable country for a specified climate disaster. Earlier cases nevertheless reveal both the legal possibilities and their limits.

1. In Trail Smelter (United States v Canada), decided in 1938 and 1941 under a special 1935 arbitration convention, Canada was required to compensate proven damage in Washington caused by fumes from a particular Canadian smelter and to control future pollution. The case established the no-harm principle, that a State must not knowingly permit activities within its territory to cause serious injury in another State.

But this case directly involved an identifiable source, neighbouring territory, measurable damage and an agreed tribunal features.

2. In Certain Activities Carried Out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua), the ICJ awarded Costa Rica US$378,890.59 in 2018 for environmental damage, restoration expenses, related costs and interest arising from Nicaragua's unlawful activities in a protected wetland. Nicaragua paid the award.

This establishes that impairment of environmental goods can be compensated under the law of State responsibility. It does not, however, resolve how responsibility for a climate disaster should be distributed among hundreds of emitters.

3. A closer precedent is during Pakistan's 2022 floods. Pakistan made a comparable climate-justice demand after floods caused more than US$30 billion in damage despite Pakistan contributing less than one per cent of global emissions. Donors subsequently pledged more than US$9 billion in recovery assistance. The disaster also strengthened the political pressure that produced the COP27 decision establishing the Loss and Damage Fund.

However, the outcome was financial assistance, but not any new framework of an admission of fault or a compensation judgment against major emitters.

4. The Vanuatu and Pacific youth movements converted their climate-justice campaign into a UN General Assembly request for an ICJ advisory opinion. The Court's 2025 opinion recognised binding climate obligations and confirmed that reparation may follow where a sufficiently direct and certain causal nexus between wrongful conduct and harm is established. In May 2026,the UN General Assembly endorsed the opinion by 141 votes to eight, with 28 abstentions, strengthening its political and interpretative authority.

How Do the Three Named Major-Emitting States Stand Differently?

The Global Carbon Project estimated that in 2024 China produced about 32 per cent of global territorial fossil-fuel CO2 emissions, the United States 13 per cent and India 8 per cent. Present emissions, however, do not constitute legal apportionment. Historical and per-capita emissions, financial and technological capacity, treaty status, breach and causation would also have to be considered.

Among the three countries, Nepal's strongest historical-responsibility argument lies against the United States because of its exceptionally large cumulative emissions, financial capacity and developed-country status. Although it left the Paris Agreement in January 2026, its separately notified withdrawal from the UNFCCC is not due to take effect until February 2027. Until then, its Convention status continues.

China and India remain developing-country Parties, hence the Paris Article 9(2) encourages rather than compels their financial contributions. However, both are nevertheless subject to applicable duties of mitigation, due diligence and cooperation.

Can Nepal Obtain Compensation from Major Emitters?

To obtain compensation as legal reparation, Nepal must proceed against each State separately. It would have to identify a binding obligation, prove its breach and distinguish emissions directly attributable to the State from a failure to regulate private activity. Scientific evidence would first have to establish that anthropogenic warming materially increased the probability or severity of this disaster. Nepal would then have to connect a defensible share of the resulting additional harm to each respondent State's wrongful conduct. Nepal must also quantify deaths, displacement, infrastructure and livelihood losses, ecological injury and cultural harm, while establishing the “sufficiently direct and certain” causal nexus required by the ICJ.

Nepal must also then find a forum. Contentious ICJ jurisdiction rests on State consent. Article 14 of the UNFCCC begins with negotiation and makes arbitration or ICJ adjudication available only where the relevant procedure has been accepted.

From Assistance to Accountability

In the circumstances, Nepal's strongest legally grounded demand is presently not a damages decree against particular States, but timely grant-based support from the Loss and Damage Fund, fulfilment of developed countries' climate-finance commitments, reconstruction assistance and regional cooperation. However, such support may not be dismissed as charity where it gives practical effect to the principles of climate justice, equity and differentiated responsibility. At the same time, describing that support as “compensation” does not, by itself, convert Nepal's losses into a judicially recoverable debt. Legal compensation still requires proof of a breached obligation, causation, quantifiable injury and jurisdiction over the responsible State.

This exposes the central weakness of the present international legal order. International law now recognises binding climate duties and accepts that their breach may require reparation, yet it provides no coherent forum or agreed method for attributing and apportioning liability where a disaster results from the cumulative emissions of many States over generations. The gap between recognising a wrong and providing an effective remedy cannot remain a permanent shelter from accountability.

The need of the hour is therefore an enforceable climate-liability framework that considers historical and continuing emissions, financial and technological capacity, scientific causation, differentiated responsibility and the polluter-pays principle. The law must evolve so that grave wrongs against Mother Earth do not become legally invisible merely because their causes are cumulative and their victims contributed little to them. Only then can climate justice move beyond assistance offered after disaster to accountability owed before the next one.

Author is an Advocate, currently acting as a Judicial Research Associate at Supreme Court of India. Views are personal.

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