ICIMOD day 2011

Theme: Enhancing Climate Resilience and Adaptive Capacity in Nepal: Communicating Activities of ICIMOD and Its Nepalese Partners

The objective of this year’s Nepal - ICIMOD Day, to be held on 11th March, is to demonstrate and communicate the work ICIMOD is carrying out with and through its Nepalese partners in the field of climate change adaptation and resilience building in Nepal and the region. Over the past years, ICIMOD and its partners have strengthened their capacity in the field of climate change adaptation by jointly launching projects on, for example, water-induced disaster risk reduction, livelihood diversification, integrated watershed management, and avoidance of deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). ICIMOD staff have become strongly involved in various initiatives from the community to the national level, and further to the regional and global levels. Initiatives include ICIMOD’s involvement in the SIDA funded project on ‘Too much and too little water’ and the IFAD and ADB funded projects on long-term adaptation by poor and vulnerable communities across the Himalayas; and ICIMOD’s support to different Nepalese Government agencies and NGO partners, for example through technical inputs to the NAPA development process in Nepal, and providing institutional support to the Mountain Initiative launched by the Government of Nepal. At the regional level, ICIMOD is supporting the Bhutanese Government in the preparatory work leading to the Bhutan Climate Summit, which aims to endorse a ‘Regional Adaptation Framework for the Eastern Himalayas’ through a summit level meeting of the heads of state or governments of the four eastern Himalayan countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal.

During this year’s Nepal - ICIMOD Day, ICIMOD’s Nepalese partners will join with ICIMOD staff to present the key findings and lessons learned from some of their ongoing partnership projects and programmes, communicating key design and implementation features, processes, and initial results that can help inform, influence, and refine Nepal’s programmes, plans and policies with regard to national climate change adaptation and resilience building. A multi-stakeholder panel composed of representatives of the government, the donor community, civil society, the private sector, and ICIMOD will discuss and reflect on appropriate approaches for integrating climate adaptation into the overall national and local development process.