We know the Earth is warming. Snow is melting, air thickens with pollution, and rivers hold more waste than life. Yet, why must a fish farmer in Koshi watch his children go hungry as fish vanish, while others are merely inconvenienced by holding their breath crossing the reeking Bagmati? Why must a mother in Madesh toil under the scorching sun, her crops destroyed by erratic rainfall, while others casually pick pre-washed vegetables wrapped in plastic, discarded without a second thought?
These questions demand an examination of Nepal’s deep socio-economic inequalities.
Climate Change Impact in Nepal
Nepal is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, ranking 10th in the Climate Risk Index. In 2014, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimated that Nepal could lose 2.2% of its annual GDP by 2050 – a projection that still continues to be cited today. Agriculture and water resources are expected to take the hardest hit, with rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfall making monsoons wetter and winters drier. These shifts are already evident as floods have doubled in recent years, while landslides, storms, and droughts have grown more frequent. In fact, as of 2019, an estimated 80% of Nepal’s population faces natural and climate-induced hazards, leading to food insecurity, water scarcity, displacement, infrastructure destruction, disease outbreaks, and even loss of life.
While floods, droughts, and landslides dominate headlines, their impact is not evenly distributed. Some face minor inconveniences – hotter days, relentless rain, traffic jams. For others, climate change means losing their homes, jobs, and sense of security.
Cycle of Inequality and Climate Degradation
Climate economist James K. Boyce presents a framework for understanding these environmentally harmful economic activities. He argues that three fundamental questions arise whenever economic activity damages the environment: Who benefits? Who suffers? And most importantly – why can those who benefit impose harm onto others?
Boyce identifies three key reasons for the final question. Sometimes, those harmed belong to future generations, unable to defend themselves. Other times, people simply lack the information to recognize or trace the source of harm. Most often, however, those who suffer are fully aware of the damage but lack the market or political power to resist it.
When inequality is high, those in power can, and do, shift environmental harm onto the vulnerable. It even incentivizes further exploitation. Consider a factory producing waste. Recycling requires segregation and specialized machinery which is costly and time-consuming. Dumping waste into a river, however, is cheap and easy, thereby making it easier to offload harm onto nearby communities. In a more equal society, local residents could demand compensation or prevent pollution, making river dumping expensive. This would push factories toward recycling, even if only partially. But in an unequal society, affected communities lack leverage. Even if they demand compensation, they accept meager sums out of necessity. This makes pollution not just easy, but profitable – encouraging greater environmental harm.
Furthermore, inequality not only drives environmental harm but also reinforces itself. Those who suffer receive little compensation while bearing the full burden of illness, land depreciation, and lost income, pushing them deeper into poverty. Meanwhile, factory owners shift costs onto others, accumulating more profit and wealth.
The result? A vicious cycle of inequity and environmental degradation. In Nepal, the cycle disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable which include rural farmers, urban poor, and marginalized groups such as Dalits, women, and children. These groups are disproportionately affected primarily due to rural-urban divides, gender inequalities, and wealth and income disparities, all of which are discussed below.
Rural and Urban Inequality
As of 2023, in Nepal, 79% of people still reside in rural areas, where the poverty rate is 25%, nearly twice as high as the 13% rate in urban areas. Furthermore, whereas rural areas mostly rely on agriculture, urban areas have more infrastructure, economic opportunities, and services like healthcare and education. Due to this rural-urban divide, city residents are protected from the negative effects of environmental problems and face limited problems such as air pollution and improper waste management, which also they can combat due to greater access to resources and higher incomes. On the other hand, rural communities, who live in geographically difficult regions and heavily rely on natural capital, face serious risks like land degradation, unpredictable rainfall, and dwindling agricultural productivity. Moreover, they lack the resources to defend themselves and stable incomes to handle these threats once they occur.
In fact, within rural areas, over 80% of Nepali farmers rely on rain-fed subsistence farming, making them heavily dependent on the climate for both income and food security. Unfortunately, with the advent of climate change, with rainfall becoming erratic and temperatures rising, agricultural production is severely impacted. A 2019 report estimated that 90% of crop losses in Nepal are climate-induced, with 40% caused by droughts and 23% by floods. The decline in crop yields not only reduces farmers’ income but also limits their food supply, pushing them deeper into poverty and, in some cases, forcing them into debt or migration in search of alternative livelihoods. Additionally, their remoteness further restricts institutional support, adaptive resources, and infrastructure, exacerbating their vulnerability and poverty.
However, disparity exists not only between rural and urban areas but also within urban centers themselves. For instance, the poorest residents, particularly those in informal settlements near rivers, face worsening climate risks compared to other urban residents. Unregulated urban expansion and poor drainage systems make them especially vulnerable to flooding. This was clearly seen during the recent monsoon flooding of 2024, which displaced over 7,600 families and 2,100 homes in Kathmandu and Lalitpur alone.
Gender Inequalities
Although Nepal has made noteworthy strides towards gender equality and continues to aim to do so, women in Nepal still face challenges due to deep-rooted gender norms, especially in rural areas. These challenges are only further exacerbated by climate change impacts. More precisely, poor, rural, and female-headed households are disproportionately affected by climate change, which exacerbates already-existing disparities in income, health, and education.
Since women are frequently excluded from healthcare and education in Nepali society, especially in rural areas, they are ill-equipped to adapt to the risks posed by climate change. In fact, more than 80% of rural women work in informal and small-scale, climate-sensitive agriculture. This means that fluctuations in weather and increase in climate disasters heavily impact their livelihoods. Furthermore, with limited education and opportunities in formal employment, rural women often find themselves unable to migrate or transition into other jobs, leaving them trapped in their circumstances. On the other hand, rural men have increasingly been migrating within and outside Nepal for better opportunities. This has led to female-headed households becoming increasingly common, resulting in women not only taking on household chores and caregiving duties but also managing agricultural work, which is already challenging due to climate fluctuations. As a result, women spend 15.3 hours of their day engaging in unpaid domestic and care work, depicting the increasing uncompensated burdens being placed on them, exacerbated by climate change.
Furthermore, these burdens that have been aggravated by climate change, have resulted in negative health impacts for women. For example, water scarcity and environmental degradation has placed an even greater burden on women, who often walk long distances to collect water and firewood. In fact, shifting climate patterns have added 1.5 to 2 extra hours to their daily workload. Moreover, one study found that over one in three women in rural areas report uterine prolapse due to the increased walking distance required to find water.
Another example of health impacts of climate change on women is observed when analyzing food shortages caused by climate change. Women are disproportionately affected by food shortages as they often sacrifice their own food intake to feed others. Pregnant and lactating women are especially vulnerable to malnutrition as they not only continue to do household duties and agricultural work in absence of their husbands, but also eat less during food storages.
Income and Wealth Inequality
Without a doubt, Nepal has made significant progress in reducing poverty and building infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and electricity. However, income inequality still remains a major challenge. In 2019, the richest 10% of Nepalese owned 26% of the country’s wealth, while the poorest 40% controlled just 12%. This inequality in income and wealth has direct effects on resilience to climate change. While wealthier individuals can afford climate adaptation measures such as irrigation systems, flood-resistant housing, and air conditioning, low-income households face extreme weather events with little to no financial safeguards.
Moreover, although all poorer communities are disproportionately affected, certain marginalized groups within poorer communities face further compounded effects of climate change. Dalits, for example, are among the least equipped to recover from climate shocks due to limited access to healthcare, education, and financial resources. Many Dalit communities work in hazardous, low-paying jobs with no financial security. In fact, 42% of Dalit households live below the national poverty line, nearly double the national average of 21.6%. Therefore, when climate induced shocks occur, such as flooding or health complications due to pollution, they do not possess the adequate savings to recover from them, nor the employment benefits to help cover costs. Instead, as climate change increasingly burdens them, their financial burdens increase as well due to sickness, missed work days, and destruction of their homes and community infrastructure, driving them further into poverty.
Additionally, children of marginalized and low-income groups are even more vulnerable to the effects of climate change compared to their adult counterparts. Since children are in their crucial developmental stages, food insecurities, increase in diseases, and disruption in daily activity caused by climate change impacts them with greater severity. Children of richer households are protected from these harmful consequences by living in cleaner climate-resilient areas and possessing higher incomes that enable greater health expenditure and food purchasing even during food shortages. On the other hand, children of poorer households do not share the same privileges. A 2023 survey of 800 low-income households across Nepal found that in the past five years, 122 people were injured or killed due to climate-induced hazards, with over 50% of them being youth or children.
Climate disasters also disrupt education, as children are forced to miss school due to natural disasters and health implications. According to the same survey, young people in affected households stopped attending school or university for up to three months per year due to climate-related damages. Additionally, even when schools are open and operating, food insecurity at home, further exacerbated by climate change, often forces children to leave school and engage in labor. For example, in Jajarkot and Bajhang, struggling families have resorted to sending their children to forage for Yarsagumba, an alpine fungus that sells at high prices. However, due to harsh high-altitude conditions, those children experienced severe illness and even death.
Path Forward
It is palpable that climate change will severely impact Nepal, especially certain vulnerable groups. Therefore, to withstand these impacts, Nepal must strengthen its preparedness for climate-related damage. There are two avenues to do this: mitigation, which reduces activities that drive climate change, and adaptation, which enhances resilience to its impacts. In both cases, addressing inequality is crucial. Reducing inequality limits the ability of polluters to shift costs onto vulnerable communities; makes environmental harm more expensive; and empowers marginalized groups with greater financial and social resources to adapt.
While Nepal has policies like the Climate Change Policy 2019, National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) 2010, and the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act 2017, their effectiveness remains debated. Moving forward, Nepal must not only strengthen these policies but also focus directly on supporting lower-income, marginalized groups in adapting to climate change. A more equal society alone won’t solve climate change – but it is a necessary step in the right direction.
Tanisha KC holds a BA in Economics from UMass Amherst, with a deep commitment to policy reform, sustainable development, and fostering inclusive economic growth. Driven by the belief that writing can be a powerful tool for change, she is currently interning at the Nepal Economic Forum. Tanisha is eager to sharpen her writing skills, immerse herself in the Nepali economy, and contribute to meaningful economic discourse that drives real-world impact.
