UTHAN

The Issue

The 2015 constitution which devolves power from federal to local government has opened avenues for civil society organisations (CSOs) to participate in and influence policy and programme formulations. However, conventional service delivery systems pervade and limited technical capacity of CSOs make it extremely challenging to engage CSOs in decision-making, especially those pertaining to climate change (CC).

Nepal ranks 10th in the Global Climate Risk Index 2021 and is highly vulnerable to climate extremities such as floods, droughts, and landslides. In this context, it is pivotal to build capacity of CSOs to mitigate and adapt to climate change. 

The Project

The project works with both the right holders (citizens and CSOs) and duty bearers (mainly local government) and focuses on empowering right holders and creating an enabling environment for them to work closely with the duty bearers. 

The project seeks to enhance the capacity, create enabling environment and promote participation of CSOs for climate resilient agriculture (CRA) technologies and practices in selected Palikas of Kanchanpur and Dailekh Districts of Nepal. It will do so by:

• enhancing knowledge, skills, and awareness on CC, DRR, and risk sensitive planning
• identifying, demonstrating, and scaling up appropriate CRA technologies and practices
• creating an enabling environment for meaningful participation of women, youth, and marginalised groups and their initiatives for the promotion of CRA. 

The Change

The expected results of the project are:

• CSOs and their networks, alliances and federations are strengthened for continued exercise of human rights and meaningful engagement in climate-responsive local governance and activity implementations
• climate resilient technologies and practices are demonstrated, promoted, and scaled up by CSOs for improving livelihoods and resilience capacity of targeted groups
• an enabling environment is created for the meaningful participation of women, youth, and marginalised groups and their initiatives for the promotion of CRA. Approximately 8,000 farming communities and 80 CSOs are targeted by this project. 

The Results

The project enhanced the participation of 54 percent (45 out of 83) CSOs members (a total of 3,724 CSOs members with 1,514 Male and 2,210 Female) in the local level planning process, which enabled them to advocate for agendas on climate change and DRR.

Altogether, 16,727 (7,980 Male and 8,747 Female) beneficiaries have been benefitted from different interventions of the Action.

The Action prepared a compendium of climate smart agriculture practices and organised different capacity building trainings such as local planning process, leadership development, climate change, disaster risk reduction, vulnerability capacity assessment (VCA), social accountability etc. to CSOs due to which 284 (including 133 Male and 151 Female, BCT – 143, Dalits – 34, JJ – 107 PwDs –2) CSO members and 47 percent CSOs (39 CSOs among 83 CSOs) have adopted climate smart practices.  

Our Work

DCA supports and strengthens the CBOs/CSOs and their networks to mobilise their members especially women, youth, and small-holder farmers/poor producers to advocate and campaign for the formulation of tailored local-level plans and programmes, in line with the policies and acts envisioned by the GoN. DCA and partners conduct action research on climate resilient agriculture practices and agroecology-based agriculture ecosystem and publish research papers to widely disseminate knowledge generated at local, provincial, and federal levels.