“Some people are more vulnerable than others” to climate change, said Judy Oglethorpe, senior director of Multilateral Program Development of the World Wildlife Fund-US (WWF) at a recent event on climate change, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Oglethorpe is the chief of party for the Hariyo Ban (Green Forests) Program, which seeks to increase ecological and community resilience to climate change in two biodiverse landscapes in Nepal. Taking a “multi-scale approach let[s] us focus on the most vulnerable people,” said Oglethorpe, and “work at different scales and across different disciplines…to reduce people’s vulnerability.”  

“Rainfall is changing. The monsoon is much less predictable than it used to be, and when it does rain, rainfall is often heavier than it used to be,” said Oglethorpe. With unpredictable alternations between intense rainfall and drought, “farmers no longer know when to plant,” and aquifer recharge is limited, she said. These inconsistent rainfall patterns result in damaged infrastructure, losses in agricultural production, and increased prevalence of disease and forest fires in communities and ecosystems.

The program started by asking people in more than 400 communities what they were seeing. “In order to have a very participatory process, we had to empower…women, and poor and marginalized people,” said Oglethorpe. Women expressed a need for improved access to health clinics—existing clinics were either too far away, or didn’t welcome them based on their caste—so the Hariyo Ban Program worked with women to advocate for more clinics as part of building their resilience to climate change.

Other community concerns “were related to forests, and the environment, and the effects of climate change,” said Oglethorpe. To address these challenges, the Hariyo Ban Program integrated ecosystem and community adaptation approaches by implementing climate-smart agriculture, restoring flood plains, diversifying household incomes, and reducing dependence on firewood.

“It’s not enough, in many cases, to work with just a single community. You have to look upstream and downstream, and see what you can do in a more holistic way,” said Oglethorpe. Provinces split river basins, so communities have a joint responsibility to manage shared resources, she said, which provides a unique opportunity for different communities to recognize their shared vulnerabilities.

“Working at these multiple levels requires a huge amount of participation and collaboration…across disciplines, across levels, between communities, between ministries,” said Oglethorpe. Planning is crucial; for example, the project works with the government to plan roads and infrastructure that can withstand future climate impacts, she said.

The low amount of funding for these integrated approaches limits implementation, but working with local authorities and newly elected representatives to build capacity in climate adaptation and disaster risk management helps leverage local funds for adaptation and make them part of local plans, said Oglethorpe.

The first phase of the program, which ended in 2016, served more than 280,000 people and reduced an estimated 4.9 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to WWF Nepal. Now well into the second phase, which goes until 2021, the program continues to work to improve conservation and management, reduce climate change vulnerability, and increase gender equality and social inclusion. 

Read More:

• Community empowerment is key to fighting climate change in Nepal, says Judy Oglethorpe in a New Security Beat
• Deforestation and population growth are pushing families to marginal lands in the foothills of Nepal, according to Scaling the Mountain, a short Wilson Center documentary in its “Healthy People, Healthy Environment” trilogy.
• Integrated development programs that combine natural resource management, health care, and education, may help boost individual and community resilience to climate change.
• Numbers are not enough – to build more sustainable communities, women must hold active decision-making roles.