Localizing climate actions in Nepal: The role of local governments in implementing National Climate Change Policy and Nationally Determined Contribution

This paper identifies a number of barriers to localization of National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) and second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). Nepal is one of the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change. The NCCP and second NDC hold meaning only when adaptation and mitigation actions tailored to the country context are worked out and implemented in such a manner as to enhance community resilience and contribute to achieving the Paris Agreement. Localizing these policy instruments by “identifying, using and enabling the potential of sub-national governments” is considered an anticipated approach to achieving their policy targets.

This paper finds that the barriers range from lack of local governments’ familiarity with NCCP and second NDC, absence of qualified human resources and, inadequate funding to lack of non-existence of institutional mechanism to lead the implementation of policies, lack of collaboration and coordination among government and non-government actors, and monitoring of the implementation status. Other constraining factors include the local elected leaders’ commitment during elections to undertaking various (infrastructure) development activities, which they want to fulfill, and for that matter, securing the local governments’ buy in and ownership of NCCP and second NDC localization process could be an uphill task.