King's College London

Damage beyond the floodwaters

The glacial collapse and flooding that struck Nepal’s Himalayan border region on 27 August devastated communities across the region. Torrents of ice, rock, mud and water tore through river valleys, destroying homes, roads, bridges and hydropower infrastructure. As rescue efforts continued into early September, over 1,300 people, including children were reported dead and thousands remained missing. In Nepal alone, officials estimated economic losses at about US$2.56 billion, while around 20,000 homes may need to be rebuilt.

Those numbers capture only part of the damage. In remote mountain communities, a destroyed bridge or blocked road can cut people off from food, medicine, schools, markets and emergency services. Damage to hydropower facilities also threatens Nepal’s energy supply and economy. In some areas, relief supplies have had to be delivered by drone because roads and bridges remain impassable.

Recovery, therefore, means more than replacing damaged infrastructure. It also means restoring safe housing, functioning transport, reliable electricity and water, productive land and access to work. Lost school time, relationships broken by forced displacement, lost places to play, and the fear and sense of loss left by the disaster are all real harms that recovery efforts need to address.

A case of climate injustice

Nepal has contributed very little to the emissions driving global warming, yet it is highly exposed to some of its most serious consequences. In 2024, Nepal accounted for only 0.08% of the global greenhouse-gas emissions. However, Nepal’s climate plan notes that the country is already experiencing loss and damage through floods, landslides, glacial-lake outburst floods, droughts, wildfires and heatwaves, despite its minimal contribution to global emissions.

The recent disaster makes this imbalance painfully visible. Rising temperatures are destabilising Himalayan glaciers and increasing risks in communities dependent on agriculture, tourism, hydropower, and fragile local infrastructure. Nepal’s estimated US$4–5 billion reconstruction requirement, close to one tenth of the country’s economy, shows the gap between the scale of climate-related damage and the resources available to respond.

Nepal has therefore framed its international appeal as a matter of climate justice rather than charity. The country is seeking international support, including through the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, created to support climate-vulnerable developing countries facing climate-related loss and damage. Yet the resources available remain far below the scale of need. Nepal is seeking around US$5 billion for recovery, while the Fund has received only about US$822 million in pledges globally. Its initial funding window is smaller still, with US$250 million set aside for early interventions.

At COP 31 in November 2026, this funding gap is likely to remain part of the climate negotiations. Countries will review the Fund’s progress and consider whether it has sufficient resources to respond to growing loss and damage. The issue is therefore not simply whether countries are willing to provide help after a disaster, but whether climate-vulnerable countries such as Nepal can rely on support proportionate to the losses they face.

Why businesses bear responsibility

Responsibility for responding to the climate crisis does not rest with governments and international organizations alone. Businesses also shape both its causes and the options for addressing it through their emissions, resource use, production, and supply chains. But that responsibility does not fall equally on every business. A small local enterprise in Nepal is not comparable to a multinational fossil-fuel producer, global manufacturer, bank, insurer or retailer with extensive supply chains. Businesses cannot treat disasters such as Nepal’s as matters for governments and charities alone. Many have helped shape the emissions-intensive economy that creates climate risk; many have benefited from it; and many have the resources and influence to reduce future harm.

Some companies bear a particularly direct responsibility because of their contribution to emissions. Large coal, oil and gas producers have operated at levels inconsistent with pathways to limit warming to 1.5°C. More recent attribution research links emissions from major fossil-fuel and cement producers to the severity of climate extremes. One estimate finds that carbon majors contributed about half of the increase in heatwave intensity since the pre-industrial period. This does not mean that any single company “caused” Nepal’s flood. But firms with major emissions footprints cannot reasonably treat climate-related harm as entirely outside their responsibility. Research can now estimate links between individual producers’ emissions and climate-related economic damage with much greater precision.

Responsibility also follows from benefit, not only from contribution. Companies and investors have profited from carbon-intensive systems of production, transport, energy and consumption, while many of the environmental costs have fallen elsewhere, often on communities with the least capacity to prepare, relocate, insure against loss, or rebuild. This tension between private value creation and wider social and environmental costs is central to corporate sustainability. Recovery finance should therefore not be understood solely as voluntary generosity. It can also be part of addressing the wider costs associated with business activity. This is not about adding another charitable initiative, but about asking who bears those costs and reflecting them in corporate objectives, risk management, disclosure, and decision-making.

Large businesses also have the capacity to act and to shape the choices available to others. They influence capital allocation, technology, logistics, procurement, supply chains, product design, pricing, and marketing, as well as the policies that governments adopt or resist. Corporate sustainability research increasingly treats firms as actors in addressing environmental grand challenges, rather than as peripheral contributors through philanthropy or reporting alone. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likewise stresses that lower-carbon ways of living depend not simply on individual willingness, but on the infrastructure, products, services and institutions that make sustainable choices viable and accessible.

The implication is that sustainable business should be judged by more than the speed or size of its emergency donations. What matters is whether firms reduce emissions, support fair and resilient recovery, and use their market and political influence to reduce future climate risk.

Nature-based solutions for adaptation

Reducing future climate risk requires more than rebuilding what was lost. It also means investing in forms of recovery that can both reduce emissions and strengthen resilience before the next disaster. Nature-based solutions (NbS), including forest conservation, watershed restoration, wetland protection and sustainable land management, can contribute to climate change mitigation by enhancing carbon sequestration and preventing emissions from ecosystem degradation. At the same time, NbS support climate adaptation by reducing flood risk, stabilising slopes, limiting soil erosion, regulating water flows, and buffering communities against extreme weather events.

Well-designed NbS can also deliver co-benefits for biodiversity, ecosystem services and local livelihoods, while often proving as effective as, or more effective than, conventional engineered approaches in addressing climate impacts. Therefore, in vulnerable mountain regions such as Nepal, integrating ecosystem restoration and conservation into climate adaptation and disaster-risk reduction strategies could help reduce the severity of future losses while supporting long-term mitigation and sustainable development.

From a climate justice perspective, who pays for these measures also matters. Large multinational corporations and high-emitting industries could help finance ecosystem restoration and resilience-building measures in vulnerable countries such as Nepal, where communities face disproportionate climate risks despite contributing relatively little to the problem.

Consumer behaviour and participation

Emphasizing the responsibility of governments and businesses does not make citizens irrelevant. We all live within carbon-intensive systems, but we can also help change them. Disasters often produce a sharp but short-lived surge of public concern. Images of destruction can prompt donations, media attention, and expressions of solidarity, but attention can fade within weeks while affected communities face a much longer recovery. Sustained public participation matters because it helps keep recovery needs, climate finance, and corporate conduct visible long after the immediate crisis.

This does not mean shifting responsibility for Nepal’s recovery or climate change onto individual consumers. Individuals cannot rebuild roads, regulate industrial emissions, or finance loss –and damage on their own. But it would be equally misleading to treat individual behaviour as irrelevant. Lower-carbon societies will also depend on changes in how people travel, eat, consume, use energy, and support public policy.

Individual behaviour can make a measurable difference, particularly in high-emitting areas such as transport, housing, and food. Global modelling suggests that demand-side strategies are necessary for deep emissions reductions in buildings and transport. Household-level evidence also shows that avoiding car ownership and flights, living in less energy-intensive homes, and adopting a vegan diet are associated with substantial reductions in consumption footprints.

Behaviour is best understood as part of a two-way relationship between people and the systems around them. Systems shape what people can realistically do: lower-carbon choices are easier to adopt when they are affordable, convenient, and socially supported. At the same time, consumer behaviour can help reshape those systems. Shifts in demand can normalise new practices, strengthen the case for public investment and regulation, and give firms incentives to redesign products, services, and supply chains. Sustainable behaviour is influenced by social norms, habits, personal benefits, emotions, and the conditions that make action easier. Businesses and governments help create those conditions, while consumers can help build support for more sustainable systems.

The aim is not momentary compassion or consumer guilt, but sustained participation: supporting credible recovery efforts, scrutinising corporate claims, making feasible high-impact changes, and backing policies that make sustainable choices more widely accessible. Consumer action matters most when it works alongside, rather than in place of, corporate accountability and government policy.

Beyond rebuilding

Nepal’s floods show why climate disasters cannot be treated as isolated humanitarian emergencies. Recovery also requires addressing the conditions that leave some communities more exposed to climate harm than others. Governments, businesses, and citizens have different responsibilities, but for businesses in particular, this means going beyond emergency donations to consider how their emissions, investments, supply chains, and decisions contribute to climate risk. The goal is not only to rebuild, but to reduce the burden placed on communities that contributed least to the crisis.