Supporting climate action through gender-responsive budgeting in Nepal

This policy brief examines the implementation of gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) in Nepal, highlighting the gap between national mandates and local execution. It argues that integrating gender-responsive budgeting with climate budget codes is essential to enhance the adaptive capacity of women, particularly in the agrarian sector, and recommends capacity building for local leaders and improved monitoring of expenditure impacts.

• Nepal has established a legal and regulatory framework for gender-responsive budgeting, including the Constitution of 2015 and the 2015 Gender-Responsive Budget Localisation Strategy. However, implementing these perspectives at the local level remains difficult due to a lack of technical capacity to plan and execute gender-responsive actions in a patriarchal society.
• Gender inequalities significantly hinder the climate resilience of women in Nepal. A 2011 census indicated that only 19.7% of households included women who owned land or property, which limits their adaptive capacity and food security.
• There is a critical lack of alignment between Nepal's gender-responsive budget codes (introduced in 2007) and its climate budget codes (introduced in 2013). The document identifies a significant opportunity to integrate these processes to ensure climate plans include gender approaches and receive sufficient funding.
• Local governance suffers from a lack of meaningful female representation and capacity. While the Constituent Assembly reserves 33% of seats for women, only 2% of mayors or chairpersons of urban and rural municipalities are women. Additionally, newly-elected women leaders often lack the financial literacy required to compete with male counterparts in budgetary processes.
• Current budget monitoring in Nepal focuses on allocation rather than expenditure or impact. This lack of tracking means that gender commitments in national plans often fail to provide evidence of equitable outcomes, as seen in the Agriculture Development Strategy (2015) which primarily benefited commercial farmers.
• Evidence suggests that combining climate budgets with gender-responsive budgets is more effective for women farmers. A 2018 review found that while climate budgets alone could not reduce agricultural workloads, the addition of gender-responsive budgets helped women adopt climate-smart technologies.

APA

Sandal, G., & Sadhukhan, B. (2021). Supporting climate action through gender-responsive budgeting in Nepal. Climate and Development Knowledge Network. https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Mainstreaming-Gender-Responsive-Budgeting_25Mar2021.pdf

Chicago

Sandal, Geeta, and Bedoshruti Sadhukhan. Supporting climate action through gender-responsive budgeting in Nepal. Climate and Development Knowledge Network, 2021. https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Mainstreaming-Gender-Responsive-Budgeting_25Mar2021.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Sandal |first1=Geeta |last2=Sadhukhan |first2=Bedoshruti |title=Supporting climate action through gender-responsive budgeting in Nepal |publisher=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |date=March 2021 |url=https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Mainstreaming-Gender-Responsive-Budgeting_25Mar2021.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{sandal2021supporting, author = {Sandal, Geeta and Sadhukhan, Bedoshruti}, title = {{Supporting climate action through gender-responsive budgeting in Nepal}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2021}, month = mar, url = {https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Mainstreaming-Gender-Responsive-Budgeting_25Mar2021.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }