Background: 

Nepal is an agriculture-based country where over 2/3rd of total population engages in agriculture for livelihoods. Agriculture sector shares about 33% of country's total GDP. Climate change adversely impact on Nepal's agriculture and forest ecosystem causing poverty and food insecurity. In order to cope up with possible drought, flooding, storms, and changes in ecosystem and species, the climate change adaptation is a crucial strategy to reduce impact of climate change on food productivity. Smallholder farmers are the most vulnerable to the predicted impacts of climate change. These vulnerable groups tend to rely on rain-fed agriculture and occupy land that is prone to floods, drought and landslides. Many of Nepal's poor farmers depend on local natural resources such as forests and water and would therefore suffer the most from the drying up of local water sources and changes in the vegetation cover.

This project designed by SNV and implemented by Sundar Nepal is in line with the Priority Framework for Action and Government of Nepal's National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) with an objective to promote climate change adaptation (CSA) practices in selected value chains.

The project targets to carry out field based activities in some community clusters of Jumla and Surkhet districts of the Mid-Western Development Region. The region is perennially food deficit. Despite food aid and supply to the region it suffers annual food deficit of at least one-fourth requirements almost every year . This has significant bearing upon the overall nutritional status of the region and is characterised by high chronic malnutrition of children and mothers. The project is being piloted in off-season vegetables in Surkhet.

Objectives:

The goal of the project is to improve income and employment in the project area by promoting climate smart agriculture (CSA) practices. The specific objectives of the project are:

• to assess the effect of climate change in apples and vegetable value chains;
• to support integration of CSA practices into the value chains
• to capture lessons from the field and facilitate knowledge sharing with relevant government agencies, development partners and other stakeholders.
• to analyze cost-benefit of CSA practices in value chain

Activites: The following activities are being implemented in the project area:

• Collect and extract the relevant available information through baseline survey.
• Relate the information  to local impact assessments and come up with Climange Change  scenarios for the selected sites
• Developing approach and designing activities for piloting together with VC actors
• Local awareness and social mobilization with farmer groups/associations
• Conducting baselines and piloting of CSA activities in line with adaptive approach in pocket areas.
• Capturing & disseminating lessons learned