Grants, glaciers and rising seas: South Asia’s agenda at COP31

COP31 entered its second day in Antalya on Tuesday with a question that matters from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean: how much will wealthy countries provide to help vulnerable communities adapt, and when will it arrive? Governments failed on Monday to reach consensus on whether to give the tripling of adaptation finance its own agenda item. For South Asian countries already dealing with floods, heat, rising seas and glacial hazards, the dispute was an early sign of how difficult it could be to turn a global pledge into money they can use. 

Bangladesh wants grants that reach vulnerable communities

Bangladesh will seek predictable, grant-based finance, stronger adaptation support and simpler access to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, State Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Shaikh Faridul Islam said while talking to The Climate Watch. “Climate justice is not a matter of charity. It is a matter of responsibility and fairness,” he said, pointing to floods, cyclones, river erosion and extreme heat in a country that contributes little to global emissions.

Environment Minister Abdul Awal Mintoo also set out the grant-based approach at a pre-summit briefing. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman left Dhaka on Tuesday to attend the summit, the first since his government took office in February. 

Dhaka wants progress towards the global goal, agreed at COP29 in Baku, of mobilising at least $300 billion a year for developing countries by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead.

It is also pressing for progress on the separate COP30 call to triple adaptation finance by 2035. At home, Islam identified stronger early warning systems, safer drinking water, climate-resilient farming and coastal protection as priorities. The government has launched a five-year programme to plant 250 million trees and plans to restore canals and expand coastal mangroves. Its National Adaptation Plan puts the cost of implementing adaptation measures from 2023 to 2050 at about $230 billion. 

During talking to The Climate Watch, M Zakir Hossain Khan, co-founder and managing director of Change Initiative, said the country borrows about $2.70 for every dollar it receives in climate grants. “We are borrowing to survive a crisis we have done virtually nothing to bring about,” he said. Khan has proposed a minimum grant share of 70% for adaptation finance, with milestones in 2028 and 2030 so countries can see whether the 2035 pledge is on track.

Farah Kabir, country director of ActionAid Bangladesh, made a related case for funding the Belém Gender Action Plan, giving women-led groups direct access to funds and publishing who actually benefits

Labiba Rahman, strategic adviser on climate change at Shakti Foundation, told The Climate Watch that funding rules can exclude the very groups meant to benefit. “A women’s group in a village can’t write a 100-page proposal,” she said. She called for simpler applications, dedicated grants for women-led organisations and deadlines for releasing funds.

Pakistan wants recovery funding and a clear finance baseline

Pakistan’s State Minister for Climate Change, Shezra Mansab Ali Khan Kharal told The Climate Watch put the cost of meeting the country’s climate commitments at about $565 billion by 2035. Speaking at a pre-COP31 consultation reported, she contrasted Pakistan’s climate ambitions with the funding available to meet them.

 “The gap between those two things is what our negotiators are set to close,” she said. Pakistan’s climate plan targets a 50% cut from projected 2035 emissions, with 17 percentage points unconditional and the remaining 33 dependent on international support. 

Kharal said the adaptation pledge will mean very different things depending on which year and funding level negotiators use as the starting point. She also said Pakistan had submitted three requests worth a combined $58 million to the loss and damage fund, covering agricultural recovery, more resilient healthcare in Balochistan and restoration of flood-damaged fisheries in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Those were funding requests, and Kharal said in October that Pakistan had yet to receive an allocation. 

Water security is another priority. Glacial hazards in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral threaten settlements and infrastructure, while farmers downstream depend on the Indus system. Pakistan wants adaptation to receive as much attention as emissions cuts, with better early warnings and more resilient irrigation and agriculture. Its priorities also include affordable climate technology, international technical support and expanding solar and wind power. The mountain issue gives Islamabad common ground with Nepal and Bhutan. Its financing position also illustrates a regional difference: countries outside the least developed country and small island groups must compete for the share of the loss and damage fund available to them under the initial funding arrangements. 

Nepal and Bhutan want a place for mountain risks in the talks

Nepal and Bhutan jointly proposed a COP31 agenda item on “1.5°C Warming in Mountains”. They want mountain risks to have a regular place in UN climate talks, backed by stronger scientific assessment and high-level dialogue. Nepal’s foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, used Monday’s opening plenary to call for a dedicated work programme and mountain-specific indicators under the Global Goal on Adaptation. The joint submission asks negotiators to consider how warming affects communities living at altitude and the people downstream who depend on mountain water. 

“Climate justice is not aid or charity for us. It is our unconditional right and a global responsibility,” Nepal’s Agriculture, Forests and Environment Minister Geeta Chaudhary said The Climate Watch. Nepal is also pressing for grants and plans to showcase community forestry, climate-smart agriculture and clean energy in Antalya. 

The risks play out over different timescales. A glacial lake outburst can destroy bridges, homes and roads in hours. Changes in snow and glacier melt can alter when water is available for farming and hydropower over years. The joint proposal calls for mountain risks to be reflected in decisions on adaptation, finance and loss and damage.

The 26 August Bhote Koshi–Trishuli floods brought those risks into focus.

“Nepal has begun a legal process to declare people still missing after the floods dead. Families can seek relief once the Cabinet issues an official declaration. The international loss and damage fund’s board provisionally set aside $21.6 million for Nepal and agreed to fast-track a funding request. The decision reserved money while Nepal prepared its request,” Geeta told The Climate Watch.

Nepal’s case for grants is backed by its own financing record. A Prakriti Resource Centre study, reviewed by The Climate Watch, found Nepal was allocated about $3.19 billion in international climate finance from 2016 to 2023. About $2.02 billion, or 63%, came as concessional loans, compared with $969.6 million, or 30%, in grants. Multilateral development banks provided about two-thirds of the total. The researchers recommended grants for work such as flood control and early warning systems, which can save lives and protect property but seldom generate revenue to repay loans. Nepal estimates its quantified emissions-reduction measures alone will cost $73.74 billion through 2035, with about $62.92 billion expected from international support.

Bhutan wants to protect hydropower and stay carbon neutral

Bhutan’s case for the joint mountain proposal also reflects the structure of its economy. Hydropower accounted for about 12% of its GDP in 2024, according to its national climate plan. The plan calls for protecting existing plants against climate risks, improving water management and expanding solar and wind power to reduce reliance on seasonal river flows. Bhutan aims to remain carbon neutral and says it needs predictable finance and technology to protect its carbon sinks and build resilience.

Sri Lanka’s plantation communities raise a question about land

In Sri Lanka, Cyclone Ditwah showed what a disaster can cost an economy still under strain. The World Bank estimated that the storm, which struck in late November 2025, caused $4.1 billion in direct physical damage to buildings, agriculture and infrastructure. That estimate captures damage to assets. The Climate Watch’s reporting on the Malaiyaha plantation community has highlighted a different question: how should recovery work for families who lose homes and livelihoods on land they have historically been denied the right to own? 

For plantation workers and their families, rebuilding involves decisions about where they can live safely, whether they can keep working and who has a say if they are moved. Sri Lanka’s national climate plan provides the policy backdrop, while the plantation community’s experience puts land rights and economic inequality at the centre of the debate over who benefits from climate spending. In negotiations about loss and damage, the experience shows why recovery programmes need to account for people’s livelihoods and tenure alongside the physical assets destroyed. 

The Maldives brings youth priorities into the delegation

For the Maldives, rising seas and coastal erosion put homes, infrastructure and freshwater supplies at risk. President Mohamed Muizzu left for Antalya on Tuesday and is due to deliver the Maldives’ national statement, his office said. Two young Maldivians, Yania Hussain Ishan and Lasan Sabah, were selected to join the official delegation after more than 40 young people developed recommendations on resilience, environmental protection and participation in climate decisions. Their recommendations were handed to the delegation before the summit. 

“Climate change and its impacts are not far off scenarios for us; they are our everyday reality,” said 16-year-old Aminath Ajna Imran during the youth programme, as reported by The Climate Watch. The recommendations give the delegation a way to bring young people’s priorities into discussions on green skills, a just transition and how island communities prepare for worsening climate risks.

Afghanistan faces a question of access

Afghanistan’s planned participation comes with a different constraint. Rohullah Amin, head of climate change at the country’s environment protection agency that Kabul planned to attend. Taliban officials were invited as observers Observer status gives those officials access to discussions without a formal negotiating role. Afghanistan faces drought, water shortages, extreme heat and flooding, according to the UN humanitarian office. Sayedmuhammad Sulimankhil, executive director of Kabul-based NGO Samsoor Watan that Afghans should receive climate finance regardless of who governs. “It’s the Afghanistan community that’s facing the climate consequences,” he said.

The numbers negotiators have to settle

The first day’s dispute over the agenda leaves a practical question for the rest of COP31: what will tripling adaptation finance mean in dollars, and how much will be available as grants? The UN Environment Programme estimated in its 2025 Adaptation Gap Report that developing countries would need $310 billion to $365 billion a year for adaptation by 2035, compared with $26 billion in international public adaptation finance in 2023. 

The two financing debates address different needs. Adaptation funding can pay for drainage, warning systems or measures to protect drinking water before a disaster hits. Loss and damage support addresses harms that communities are already living with. For a coastal household, those can include the loss of a home or a livelihood, and the costs of moving when staying is no longer safe.

The loss and damage fund faces a separate test. Its board initially set aside $250 million for its first funding round and later increased that allocation to $342 million. Kharal cited about $2.8 billion in requests. Those figures measure different things: the amount countries have asked for and the amount made available for the initial round. Even the larger allocation leaves substantial demand unmet. 

How that money is distributed matters just as much. Dr Md Golam Rabbani, director of BRAC University’s Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Research, has called for Bangladesh to identify which communities face the highest risks and publish evidence of whether projects helped. In Bhola, that could mean counting households with severe drinking water shortages before and after a project. For flood-hit districts in Pakistan or settlements below glacial lakes in Nepal, the equivalent test is equally concrete: whether people have safer places to live, services they can rely on and a way to recover before the next disaster strikes.