Discuss the concept of climate injustice with reference to recent climate shock events in South Asia. How can regional cooperation mechanisms address unequal vulnerability?

Climate injustice describes the mismatch between responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to climate harm — those who emit least suffer most. South Asia's recent succession of climate shocks makes this asymmetry starkly visible.

Climate injustice in South Asia: the evidence

• Disproportionate loss: On 26 August 2026, a glacier-fed surge down the Bhote Koshi devastated Nepal's Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts, killing and displacing thousands [1] — yet Nepal, a Least Developed Country, contributes very little to global emissions [5].
• Scale of regional exposure: Cyclone Ditwah struck Sri Lanka in late 2025, affecting about 2.2 million people across all 25 districts [4].
• Vulnerability within vulnerability: Over 17,000 children in Nepal needed urgent humanitarian assistance [3]; migrant hydropower workers and remote hill settlements bore the worst losses.
• Compounded development setback: Destroyed roads, bridges and power lines crippled health access and relief delivery, diverting scarce fiscal resources from development to reconstruction [2].

Regional cooperation to address unequal vulnerability

• Institutionalise the SAARC Disaster Management Centre: shift from advisory work to a standing regional early-warning, training and rapid-response mechanism [7].
• Transboundary monitoring: joint glacial-lake and river-basin data sharing, since Himalayan floods cascade downstream into India's Bihar and Uttar Pradesh plains.
• Pooled humanitarian capacity: a regional relief reserve and pre-agreed HADR protocols under BIMSTEC, complementing India's Neighbourhood First deployments.
• Collective climate diplomacy: a common South Asian claim on the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage carries far more weight than isolated national appeals [6].
• Shared resilience standards: common design norms for Himalayan hydropower and border infrastructure against glacial outburst risk.

Climate injustice in South Asia is thus a governance gap as much as an emissions gap. Converting episodic bilateral aid into permanent, funded regional institutions — anchored in CBDR and SDG 13 — would let the region convert shared vulnerability into shared resilience.