September 14: Finance Minister Janardan Sharma informed world leaders that Nepal is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world in view of climate change due to its climate-dependent economy and limited adaptation capacity.    
In his address to the second edition of the Green Climate Fund Programming Conference held in Incheon of South Korea on Tuesday, Finance Minister Sharma said Nepal has been gradually grappling with crisis due to climate change. The conference that kicked off on Tuesday will conclude on Thursday.    
With the rise in global warming, incidents of natural calamities have increased, glacial lakes have been bursting out and frequency of floods and landslides is also on the rise, he said.    
Despite negligible contribution to the global emission of Green House Gases, the least developed countries are bearing the brunt of negative impact of the climate change, the minister added.    
"As a member-nation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Nepal has actively advanced its efforts and engagement in the global fight against climate change," he shared.    
On the occasion, Minister Sharma further noted that all countries should come up with concrete measures to reduce GHG emission so as to limit the rise of global temperature to an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius.    
The minister also informed that Nepal, as an ambitious climate change stakeholder, has devised numerous plans to enhance the climate change resilient capacity.    
The National Climate Change Policy, 2019 has explicitly set the goal of building climate resilient society and thereby contributing to the social-economic prosperity of the country.    
In materializing the goal, the national policy has taken several sub-policies, strategies and measures in the key thematic areas of climate change, the finance minister said.    
He further shared that Nepal has already signed the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC. Nepal has set a target of becoming net zero emission country by 2045, he said, adding that the country has adopted a policy to spend at least 80 percent of the climate finance to respond to the negative impacts of climate change. -- RSS