Cop31: Forget climate pledges, countries like Nepal need actual cash

Rizwan Basir, a sociologist, is a senior technical specialist at the Climate Resourcing and Coordination Centre (CRCC) in Islamabad, Pakistan.Every climate summit now runs on the same illusion: the next pledge will be the one that finally saves us. It will not. The money the rich world has promised the poor world is not coming at anything like the scale advertised, and pretending otherwise has become the main business of climate diplomacy.Barely nine weeks before the UN climate summit Cop31 opens in Antalya, Turkey, the honest task is not a bigger pledge. It is to make the finance that already exists reach the people drowning in the consequences. Nepal is the test sitting in plain sight, and the system is failing it.Late last month, a melting glacier gave way on the edge of the Himalayas and sent a wall of rock and water down the valley, burying whole settlements and leaving a country in national mourning.