Climate-smart agriculture for resilience in Dolakha

February 16, 2018

Kabita Gurung and her husband Dip Bahadur were among the many farmers in Marbu, Dolakha, eking out a hard living on the land. The small kitchen garden they own, where they’ve planted a number of vegetables, barely produced enough for them to eat, let alone sell for profit. They eventually came to the realization that the reason for their poor luck was the fact that they were hopelessly behind the times when it came to newer, better-yielding farming techniques and technologies.

In a fortunate turn of events, technical experts from the District Agriculture Development Office were facilitating a training on off-season vegetable farming and plastic tunnel construction in the area, facilitated by UNDP’s Integrated Climate Risk Management Programme, with financing from the Swedish Government and jointly implemented with the Government of Nepal—and Kabita was among the participants. A total of 25 farmers from Marbu were thus trained in climate-smart agricultural practices.

Coming back from the training, Kabita and Dip Bahadur have erected two plastic tunnels each for tomatoes and chillies, and planted 400 Akbare chilli saplings in the open. “These have really flourished under the new techniques,” Kabita shares. Indeed, production is now so good that after setting some apart for their own consumption, they still had 40 kilograms of tomatoes that they sold locally for Rs. 50 per kilo locally as well as to different companies. “It’s hard to believe the same plot of land could bear such different results,” says Kabita.

The Integrated Climate Risk Management Programme (ICRMP) is a global programme spearheading UNDP’s climate risk management (CRM) approach, which aims to strengthen the risk management practice by harmonizing risk reduction and adaptation to effect a holistic, positive impact on poverty reduction and development. Funded by the Government of Sweden, ICRMP currently spans six pilot countries (Honduras, Armenia, Kenya, Uganda, Nepal, and Indonesia).

The ICRMP builds upon the climate risk assessment methodology and experiences under past UNDP programmes, especially the Climate Risk Management – Technical Assistance Support Project (CRM-TASP ), which was completed in 17 countries to assess the overall risk that climate change poses to sensitive development sectors, including agriculture, water and sanitation, food security, healthcare and managing the environment, and to identify actions that governments and communities can take to protect lives and livelihoods.