Nepal, Oct. 24 -- Nepal's negotiators hailed the $21.6 million grant from the UN's Loss & Damage Fund for the Trisuli Valley disaster on 26 August, but it was approved reluctantly, represents only 0.4% of the cost of recovery and reconstruction, and there are strings attached.

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) this week provisionally approved the grant to Nepal for relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction two months after the flood catastrophe. It was announced in the run-up to a global climate summit (COP31) in Turkiye that starts 9 November.

Although Nepal is the first beneficiary of this scheme set up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during a previous climate summit in Egypt's Sh...