Climate-smart agriculture in Nepal

This policy brief outlines the results of a project to identify and scale up 'champion' Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) technologies in Nepal. It identifies 17 high-potential CSA options across the Terai, mid-hills, and high-hills regions and proposes three scaling-up models—knowledge-transfer, commercial business, and policy incidence—to overcome institutional barriers and gaps between policy and implementation.

• Climate change is causing significant distress to Nepal's agriculture-dependent communities through increased temperatures, unseasonal heavy winter rains, and long drought spells during the monsoon. Direct agricultural losses due to climate change are estimated at approximately 0.8% of current GDP annually, with a projected adaptation deficit of US$2.4 billion by 2030 across three sectors, including agriculture.
• The project identified a broad pool of potentially scalable agricultural technologies for three regions: 56 for the Terai, 58 for the mid-hills, and 58 for the high-hills. After participatory on-farm evaluation and screening for technical appropriateness, farmer acceptance, economic benefits, climate sensitivity, and scalability, a final list of 17 'champion' CSA options was established.
• The 17 champion CSA options are distributed across regions as follows: 11 for high-hills, 13 for mid-hills, and 10 for Terai. Seven of these options are considered to have high potential for application across all three agro-ecological regions. Examples of these champion options include ICT-based agro-advisory, community seed banks, and agriculture insurance (particularly index-based).
• Climate analogue analysis was used to determine the potential for scaling up technologies by identifying areas with similar climatic conditions. Currently, over 65% of the land area in the project districts (Nawalparasi, Kaski, and Lamjung) shows 25–50% climate similarity, while areas with more than 75% similarity are very few, ranging from <1% to 9.5%.
• A review of Nepal's national policy environment indicates a gap between policy intentions and implementation. While there is increasing coherence in objectives for agriculture development and climate change since 2000, these intentions are rarely translated into annual plans, budgets, and actions. Barriers to scaling up include an inadequate evidence base for CSA tools, weak coordination between government and private sectors, and limited human and financial resources.
• The project proposes three distinct models for scaling up CSA technologies based on their nature: a 'knowledge-transfer model' for knowledge-intensive options (e.g., conservation agriculture), a 'commercial business model' for input-intensive or proprietary options (e.g., new seed varieties), and a 'policy incidence model' for options requiring government intervention or policy changes (e.g., solar-based irrigation and index-based insurance).

APA

Paudel, B., Khanal, R. C., KC, A., Bhatta, K., & Chaudhary, P. (2017). Climate-smart agriculture in Nepal. Climate and Development Knowledge Network. https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Nepal-agriculture-synthesis-final444.pdf

Chicago

Paudel, Bikash, Ram Chandra Khanal, Arun KC, Kiran Bhatta, and Pashupati Chaudhary. Climate-smart agriculture in Nepal. Climate and Development Knowledge Network, 2017. https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Nepal-agriculture-synthesis-final444.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Paudel |first1=Bikash |last2=Khanal |first2=Ram Chandra |last3=KC |first3=Arun |last4=Bhatta |first4=Kiran |last5=Chaudhary |first5=Pashupati |title=Climate-smart agriculture in Nepal |publisher=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |date=May 2017 |url=https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Nepal-agriculture-synthesis-final444.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{paudel2017climatesmart, author = {Paudel, Bikash and Khanal, Ram Chandra and KC, Arun and Bhatta, Kiran and Chaudhary, Pashupati}, title = {{Climate-smart agriculture in Nepal}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2017}, month = may, url = {https://cdkn.org/sites/default/files/files/Nepal-agriculture-synthesis-final444.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }