Nepal National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA)

Nepal is largely an agrarian economy and thereby highly sensitive to changes in climate and natural resource availability. Climate change threatens to reduce the effectiveness of development initiatives across Nepal. This will increase the vulnerability of marginalized and poor people in both rural and urban areas of western Nepal. Further increases in the intensity of rain in other parts of Nepal, particularly those where the topography is broken and eroded soils, will experience increased flooding and landslide risks threatening human security, water supplies, and urban infrastructures. Hence, effective climate change adaptation is required.

Adaptation aspects in major sectors like forestry, agriculture, water resources and health are presented in Nepal's National Communication of 2004. Adaptation measure to Climate Change could be approached by intensifying the conservation of drought resistant crop varieties by improving cropping practices to conserve water; and by promoting crop diversification. Several aspects of the vulnerability and impact analysis in agriculture sector can also be improved, for example, development of improved climate scenarios, development of more suitable crop models, and search for alternative analytical approaches.

Source: Nepal NAPA (September, 2010)