Nepal First Recipient of $20 Million Provisional Allocation from Global Loss and Damage Fund for Flood Recovery

Key facts

• The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) provisionally set aside $20 million for Nepal at an emergency board meeting convened on Thursday, making Nepal the first beneficiary of international funding for loss and damage.
• The FRLD was created at the COP27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in 2022 and was operationalised at COP28 in Dubai the following year with the announcement of the first round of pledges.
• Nepal was devastated by massive floods following a rock and ice avalanche on August 26 in the northeastern district of Rasua, which killed more than 1,300 people and left over 5,000 missing.
• Nepal's government estimates economic loss and damage from the floods at a minimum of $2.69 billion, with initial recovery and reconstruction needs pegged at a minimum of $4.71 billion.
• The $20 million provisional approval is the largest amount the FRLD can currently approve for any single event, though it is less than one per cent of Nepal's assessed requirement.
• Nepal has been asked to make a formal application for a funding request, which will be considered at the FRLD Board's next meeting in December.
• As of June this year, the FRLD had received 176 funding requests from 119 countries for a total sum of $2.8 billion, with decisions expected at the scheduled December board meeting.
• Each funding request to the FRLD must be between $5 million and $20 million, though countries can submit multiple requests for different incidents.