Kumi Naidoo
As rescue teams search through mud, shattered homes and broken roads in Nepal, the temptation for those of us thousands of kilometres away is to experience the catastrophe as another terrible international news story.
We must resist that temptation.
What has unfolded across the Nepal-Tibet border is a human tragedy of enormous proportions. A massive collapse of glacier ice and rock high in the Himalayas unleashed an avalanche and devastating flash floods through valleys below.
Entire communities have been overwhelmed.
Roads and bridges have been destroyed, and at the time of writing, hundreds have been confirmed dead while well over a thousand people remain missing. Rescue operations are continuing, so these figures may still change dramatically.
Behind every statistic is a family waiting for a telephone call, a parent looking for a child, someone searching for a home that no longer exists. We should therefore be cautious about turning suffering too quickly into a political argument.
And scientists are rightly cautious about attributing any single glacier collapse solely to climate change.
The precise causes of this disaster are still being investigated. But caution must not become denial.The broader scientific picture is terrifyingly clear. The Himalayas are warming rapidly.
Glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalayan region are disappearing at accelerating rates, and Nepal has lost close to a third of its glacial ice in approximately three decades. Warmer conditions can increase melting, destabilise ice and mountain slopes and contribute to the formation of dangerous glacial lakes.
Scientists are now examining the extent to which those changing conditions contributed to this week's catastrophe. Nepal, in other words, is experiencing one manifestation of a destabilised climate system.
South Africans should pay attention because the geography may be different, but the injustice is painfully familiar.
We do not have Himalayan glaciers hanging above Durban, Mthatha or Johannesburg. But we know what happens when increasingly extreme weather meets poverty, inequality, fragile infrastructure and inadequate preparation.
In April 2022, catastrophic flooding and landslides struck KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Eastern Cape. More than 400 people were killed and tens of thousands affected. Scientists subsequently found that human-induced climate change had approximately doubled the probability of the extreme rainfall event and increased its intensity by an estimated 4–8%.
The poorest communities, particularly those living in informal settlements and precarious locations, suffered disproportionately. Then, in June 2025, devastating flooding again struck the Eastern Cape.
Among the most haunting images was a school transport vehicle swept away near Mthatha. At least 78 people ultimately died as search-and-rescue operations continued.
Nepal and South Africa therefore share something much more profound than vulnerability to extreme weather. Both reveal the central injustice of the climate crisis: those who have contributed least to creating the problem frequently suffer its consequences first and hardest.
Nepal's historical contribution to global greenhouse-gas emissions is tiny. Africa as a continent has contributed only a small fraction of cumulative global emissions. Yet both are being asked to absorb escalating losses from a crisis overwhelmingly created through two centuries of fossil-fuelled industrialisation elsewhere.
That is why we must stop talking about climate change as though it is simply an environmental problem. It is an inequality problem. It is a development problem. It is a health problem. It is a food and water problem.
And increasingly, it is a question of whether people can safely remain in the places they have called home for generations.There is another uncomfortable connection South Africans should confront.
While our country is extraordinarily vulnerable to climate disruption, we remain heavily dependent on coal. This creates a legitimate dilemma. Millions of South Africans need reliable electricity. Workers and communities cannot simply be abandoned as coal declines.
Poverty will not be solved by shutting mines tomorrow morning. But neither will poverty be solved by pretending coal has an indefinite future. The choice is not between climate action and development.
The real choice is between a planned, funded and just transition and an increasingly chaotic transition forced upon us by economics, technology and climate breakdown.Indeed, change is already occurring.
South African mining companies themselves are investing heavily in renewable electricity because it can lower costs, improve energy security and reduce dependence on Eskom. The political challenge is to ensure that workers and communities benefit from that transition rather than becoming its casualties.
This is also why the global climate debate must finally address fossil fuels at their source. For decades we have negotiated emissions while inadequately confronting the coal, oil and gas producing those emissions.
It is rather like trying to mop an overflowing bathroom floor while refusing to turn off the tap. Renewable energy, adaptation, resilient infrastructure and early-warning systems are all essential.
Nepal desperately needs them. So does South Africa.
But adaptation has limits.You cannot adapt indefinitely to disappearing glaciers, collapsing ecosystems, unbearable heat or floods capable of removing entire settlements. And poorer countries cannot perpetually borrow money to rebuild infrastructure destroyed by a crisis they did little to cause.
That is why wealthy countries must dramatically increase grant-based climate finance, fulfil their responsibilities on loss and damage, and support developing countries to leapfrog towards cleaner and more resilient economies.
South Africa, meanwhile, occupies an important position. We are simultaneously a developing country with profound inequality, a major coal economy and a country with extraordinary renewable-energy potential.
We therefore have both reason and opportunity to help shape a different global pathway: one in which fossil fuels are phased out fairly, wealthy countries move fastest and provide finance, and developing countries receive the resources necessary to pursue prosperity without repeating the carbon-intensive development of the past.
The people of Nepal need solidarity today: rescue assistance, humanitarian support and resources to rebuild. But solidarity must mean more than sympathy after disaster strikes. The most meaningful solidarity is preventing the next catastrophe from becoming even worse.
From the Himalayas to KwaZulu-Natal, the climate crisis is reminding humanity of something physics has been telling us for decades: borders offer no protection from a destabilised planet.
What happens in Nepal is not distant from South Africa. It is a warning from our shared future. And we would be foolish not to listen.
* Kumi Naidoo is the President of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative and the co-founder of the Global Artivism Movement. He was previously the Secretary General of Amnesty International and Executive Director of Greenpeace International.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Media Group.