nepal

by Chase Sova and Jessica Thorn

Researchers from the University of Oxford arrived in Beora, Nepal on a hot, humid day in May of this year. It was here, between the mid-hills region of Nepal and the border of India, that the team would spend the next four months working with farmers, collecting data on the tools, methods and frameworks to support climate change adaptation.

The main objective was the “Farms of the Future” (FOTF) project, an initiative designed to test how the climate analogues tool (PDF) could be used to inform decision making and improve the adaptive capacity of small-holder farmers. The Farms of the Future project is embedded in the Systemic Integrated Adaptation (SIA) research programme which conducted the research.

To give a background, the analogues tool uses downscaled temperature and precipitation predictions and current data sets to identify spatial analogues, i.e. sites with statistically similar temperature and precipitation trends, for the predicted 2030 climate of a given reference site as Beora. In the FOTF project, the analogue tool outputs were used to inform the selection of locations for farmer exchanges. Read more »

The Farms of the Future project helps farmers envision their future climate by taking them there… on a bus. Neil Palmer, from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) reports from Beora, Nepal, where the first farmer visits recently took place. This story was originally posted on the CIAT blog.

I knew not to expect “guide book” Nepal: majestic, snowy peaks; multicoloured prayer flags fluttering against clear blue skies. But nothing quite prepared me for the Terai. Around 120 km west of the capital Kathmandu, this is a hazy, sweltering, lowland plain, where daytime temperatures hover around 45 degrees Celsius, with little respite after dark.

With the sweat pouring off you day and night, it’s so hot it’s hard to concentrate. Every few minutes for the first few days, I’d close my eyes and catch fleeting, dream-like sequences of gulping down ice cold water; gushing Alpine waterfalls; news footage of buff-chested Russians swan-diving into semi-frozen lakes. You shake the images away, but the heat persists.

Despite the tough conditions, the Terai is Nepal’s breadbasket, producing around 50% of the country’s food. Rice, wheat, maize and a variety of vegetables are all grown here, in the northeastern reaches of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Read more »

Edited by Cecilia Schubert

In Nepal, the involvement of men and women in agriculture is starting to change.

“Before, women used to tend to the household work, while the men engaged themselves in the agricultural labor,” explained Nani Raut, a researcher who last year received a gender grant from the CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). “But after the adoption of agricultural intensification practices, which are increasing in the country, women are now equally involved in agriculture,” she said. Read more »

By Rasheed Sulaiman

Indian agriculture is extremely sensitive to climate change and its impact is increasing over time¹. The Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGPs) in India, which is considered as its “bread basket” providing food security and employment to several hundred millions of people, is extremely vulnerable to climate risks^2,3. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is therefore vital for securing agricultural growth and poverty reduction for this region.

Adaptation is not a new phenomenon per se in agriculture as agricultural systems have always been responding to improved technologies, better market opportunities and changing weather patterns. However the nature and speed of adaptation vary considerably in different regions and among varied social groups. Understanding this process of local adaptation or innovation is extremely important for the successful design of policies, programmes and interventions that address climate risks. Read more »