Nepal is right to demand compensation, not aid. But holding India and China accountable for today’s choices doesn’t let colonial powers off the hook for yesterday’s.
Nepal is right.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister, Shisir Khanal, put it aptly: the diplomatic framework must shift from ‘aid’ to ‘justice and compensation’.
Countries facing catastrophic climate losses should be asking for justice and compensation, not waiting for charity.
And yes, India and China must be called out.
Both countries are pursuing development at a scale and pace that is placing enormous pressure on land, water, air, communities and ecosystems.
‘Developing country’ cannot become permanent permission for irresponsible development.
India cannot invoke climate justice internationally while approving poorly planned infrastructure, weakening ecosystems and leaving its own communities exposed to floods, heat and pollution.
China cannot hide the environmental consequences of its industrial expansion behind the argument that the West industrialised first.
Present-day responsibility is still responsibility.
But India, China and the United States cannot be treated as though they arrived at this moment through the same historical route.
The United States and Europe consumed a substantial share of the world’s carbon budget while building their industries and accumulating wealth.
Several European countries also built that wealth through colonial extraction.
They extracted raw materials, labour and capital from colonised countries while restricting those countries’ own industrial development.
Where are those countries in the compensation conversation?
A former colonial power cannot retain the wealth accumulated through extraction, celebrate its falling domestic emissions, outsource carbon-intensive production elsewhere and then treat climate responsibility as somebody else’s problem.
That is not climate leadership. It is creative accounting.
Current annual emissions matter.
So do cumulative emissions, emissions per person, consumption-based emissions, financial capacity and present development choices.
But any calculation of climate responsibility that ignores colonial extraction and inherited wealth is historically incomplete.
So, Nepal is right to demand compensation.
India and China should not be exempt from contributing simply because they are developing countries. Their current choices affect the entire region, including countries sharing Himalayan rivers, glaciers and ecosystems.
But neither should they be placed in one convenient category with the United States while former European colonial powers quietly leave the frame.
The question is not whether India and China are responsible.
They are.
The question is whether the rest of the historically responsible world will be held to the same standard.
COP31 wants to move climate action from commitment to implementation.
Then it must confront the question everyone prefers to avoid:
Who pays, how much, and based on which version of history?
Credits
This post is written for ecoHQ by Deepa Sai