Climate change adaptation in Nepal

In 2010, the Government of Nepal approved National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA). NAPA developed as a requirement under the UNFCCC to access funding for the most urgent and immediate adaptation needs from the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF).

In Nepal, NAPA developed with three components: Preparation and dissemination of NAPA documents, development and maintenance of the Nepal Climate Change Knowledge Management Centre (NCCKMC), and development of the Multi-Stakeholder Climate Change Initiative Coordination Committee (MCCICC).

In NAPA, nine integrated projects have been identified as the urgent and immediate national adaptation priority. They are:

1. Promoting community-based adaptation through integrated management of agriculture, water, forest and biodiversity sector
2. Building and enhancing adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities through improved system and access to services related to agriculture development
3. Community-based disaster management for facilitating climate adaptation
4. GLOF Monitoring and disaster risk reduction and forest and ecosystem management for supporting climate-led adaptation innovations
5. Adapting to climate challenges in public health and ecosystem management for climate adaptation
6. Empowering vulnerable communities through sustainable management of water resource and clean energy support and promoting climate smart urban settlement

NAPA’s implementation framework envisages that the operating costs will be kept to a minimum and at least 80% of the available financial resources will reach the local level to fund activities on the ground. Stakeholders in Nepal has also started discussing National Adaptation Plans(NAPs), which are medium and long term adaptation plans for the country as decided by UNFCCC.[1]

Effect of climate change in Nepal

The effects of greenhouse gases (GHGs) on both drought and flooding events have been found, including severe winter drought[2] and excessive monsoon flooding.[3] Climate change has been alarming in the context of global warming. In Nepal, 95% of green house gas emissions from agriculture and forestry sectors were 77% from forestry sector only.[4] The consequences of global warming have had the most impact in developing and mountainous countries like Nepal, which has high intensity rainfall during the rainy season. It has resulted in heavy floods, landslides and soil erosion. It is also common to find drought in many parts of Nepal that comes from the impacts of climate change and impacts sectors like forest, water resources, agriculture, human health and biodiversity in Nepal.[5] Likewise, altogether 14 glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)[6] have happened between 1935 & 1991 in Nepal. In total, 21 GLOFs[7] have been identified as being potentially dangerous at present. In this way, CC and livelihoods integral part and have vice versa relationship. The low income & subsistence users are about 38% of total population Nepal lies below the poverty line have hard time to afford for their livelihoods. It is a great challenge to cope with climate change induced hazard & extreme events. The livelihoods of more than 80% local people of hilly region are heavily depending on climate sensitive area such as agriculture, forest and livestock and on other natural resources such as water & irrigation.

Potentiality of climate change adaptation

Response to climate change in Nepal has been growing in recent years with an effort to cope with the changing situation and build resilience capacity into adaptation to climate change. In climate induced vulnerability context, Nepal developed policy level provision regarding to adaptation policy called National Adaptation Programme of Action to climate change (NAPA).[8] The NAPA document opened the door to act adaptation activities into country. Under the provision of national level policy, Local Adaptation Plan of Action (LAPA) national framework [9] devised out by government. It only mentioned the provision of the implementation mechanism at district or village development committee level to act climate change adaptation. However, this document is still silent to provision of implementation mechanism at community level. Though there are still silent to act adaptation implementation mechanism at community level, some community level adaptive strategies are being implemented as community based adaptation plan for poor & vulnerable communities and who have less capacity to cope with disaster and are more dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods.

Adaptation in the agricultural sector

Adaptation to climate change in the agricultural sector and allied sectors is a major current and future challenge for Nepal.[10] The majority of the population is still dependent on highly climate-sensitive agriculture. In recent years, long drought spells during the monsoon season and increased temperatures and unseasonal heavy rains during winter have caused serious distress to agriculture-dependent communities in many locations. If the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of ending poverty, achieving food security and promoting sustainable agriculture are to be realised, climate change adaptation interventions need to be implemented in earnest.[11]

Goods and services from community forest

After 3 decades of CF in Nepal, more than 1.652 million forest lands handed over to 1.45 million households of 17685 community forest user group (CFUG)[12] to conserve, manage and utilization . CFUG as a common property resource management program in Nepal have resulted in improving forest cover and condition. By institutionally, Community forest user group is autonomous, independent and accountable institution for conserving, managing and utilizing of natural resources in Nepal legitimized by Forest Act 1992 and Forest Regulation 1995 of Nepal. The additional advantages are as effective protection, wise use of resources, plantation, forest fire control, and more effective contribution to local development and economic generation. It enhanced biodiversity, water flow and soil stability. More than 90% of villagers report that their forests are in better condition than a decade ago. Furthermore, CFs are able to meet poor & vulnerable household's daily subsistence needs for forest products such as firewood, fodder, & timbers. Apart from this, growing forests capture and store carbon that are contributing to both mitigation and adaptation to CC. Because of, user groups have institutionally developed after CF handed over. Furthermore, the landscape of hills of Nepal drastically transformed into greenery.[13] Such types of changes have positive impact on carbon sequestration which has contributed in reducing effects of climate change.

It is not only the CF contributing in climate change adaptation by providing goods and services, the CFUGs have also been used as local institutions for adaptation planning.[14]

Conclusion

Traditional top-down decision-making processes have become inadequate, due to their inability to create appropriate solutions for local communities. Nepal's forest cover, condition and quality are being improved. This is the success of only through three way partnership such as communities from bottom-up function, government & donor from top-down function and NGOs, civil society network from outside-in. In this situation, CFUGs have to be involved in mainstreaming to implement climate change adaptation. It is due to they are playing the key role in proactive in investing their funds, climate change knowledge transfer and policy feedback to adopt to the impact of climate change. Policy shall be emphasized the establishing groups around the resources that are indispensable for the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable groups to access diversification opportunity. It is necessary to bridge this gap; bottom-up approaches may produce the best results by building on local experiences and knowledge. For this, building-up the capacity of groups and their poor and vulnerable communities on climate change mitigation and adaptation is pertinent. In addition to this, focus needs to be given on institutional development, capacity building and awarding CFUGs for their good work on forest development and bio-diversity protection which ultimately contributes to ecological and environment balance.

References

1. Clean Energy Nepal from http://www.cen.org.np/index.php?page=news_detail&nid=283#.USe4wR2LDgs
2. Wang et al. 2014 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00800.1
3. Cho, Changrae; Li, Rong; Wang, S.-Y.; Yoon, Jin-Ho; Gillies, Robert R. (2016). "Anthropogenic footprint of climate change in the June 2013 northern India flood". Climate Dynamics. 46 (3–4): 797–805. doi:10.1007/s00382-015-2613-2.
4. MoST 2004 Initial National Communication Report on Climate Change.: Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of Nepal, submitted to UNFCCC.
5. Hibiba, Gitay, et al. 2002 Climate Change and Biodiversity. IPCC Technical Paper IV. ICIMOD
6. Mool, PK; Bajracharya, SR; Joshi, SP (2001) Inventory of Glaciers, glacial lakes, glacial lake outburst floods monitoring and early warning system in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan region, Nepal. Kathmandu, Nepal:ICIMOD
7. Mool, PK; Bajracharya, SR; Joshi, SP (2001)Inventory of Glaciers, glacial lakes, glacial lake outburst floods monitoring and early warning system in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan region, Nepal. Kathmandu, Nepal:ICIMOD
8. NAPA 2010 National Adaptation Programmes of Actions: Ministry of Environment/GoN,http://www.moste.gov.np/elibrary?page=3#.USZNYR3Is1I Archived 2013-11-02 at the Wayback Machine
9. LAPA Nov 2011 Local Adaptation Plan of Action National Framework: Ministry of Science, Technology & Environment, Government of Nepal http://www.moste.gov.np/elibrary?page=3#.USZNYR3Is1I Archived 2013-11-02 at the Wayback Machine
10. "Nepal Baseline Assessment Summary". UNDP Climate Change Adaptation Portal. UNDP.
11. Climate-smart agriculture in Nepal, Climate & Development Knowledge Network, 31 July 2017
12. Department of Forest/GoN from http://www.dof.gov.np/division/community-forest-division/community-forestry Archived 2012-12-11 at the Wayback Machine
13. Community based Conservation Is It make effective, efficient and sustainable? from http://www.future.org/publications/community-based-conservation-it-more-effective-efficient-and-sustainable Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
14. Gurung, Niru; Karki, Rahul; Ojha, Hemant; Khatri, Dil B.; Paudel, Naya S. (2013). "Integrating Climate Change Adaptation with Local Development: Exploring Institutional Options". Journal of Forest and Livelihood. 11: 1–13. doi:10.3126/jfl.v11i1.8606.