ADB: District-level Training Toolkit on Climate Change and Environmental Management, Part A: Facilitator’s Guide.
Ministry of Environment for the last ten years has been playing leading a role to address the issues on environment management. MoEnv is working as regulatory institution in the field of pollution control, EIA, IEE and various other issues. MoEnv is acting as a focal institution in Climate Change field. Though Nepal emits very less quantity of Green House Gases compared to others, Nepal is highly affected with the impact of climate change because poor and marginalised communities have least resources and capacity to get adapted to these impacts. It was revealed from different studies that if the adaptive capacities of these communities are not increased, it is certain that they will face the negative impacts of climate change. Similarly the environmental management crisis at local level is further aggravating the impacts of Climate Change, thereby decreasing the adaptive capacity of poor and marginalised communities. Therefore, it is very necessary to increase the adaptive capacity of Nepalese communities for sustainable livelihoods by adapting to climate change.
More than one sector is affected by impacts of climate change. Therefore there should be an integrated effort to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Keeping this in mind, MoEnv is making an effort to increase the capacity on Climate Change and Environment Management.
Inadequate practices to integrate and address the issues related to environment management and climate change in local development plans is one of the major challenges. Therefore it is very necessary to capacitate government staffs, government line agencies, private sectors and civil societies so that they will be able to incorporate appropriate adaptation practices to deal with the impacts of CC at local level. Capacitating them will help to develop the CC adaptation responsive plan, its implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.
Government of Nepal, in an effort to address these issues, has formulated Climate Change Council with the chairmanship of Right Honourable Prime Minister. Likewise, MoEnv has established Climate Change Division, & prepared and implemented National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA 2010) and Climate Change Policy 2068. Likewise, Multi-Stakeholder Climate Change Initiatives Coordination Committee (MCCICC) has been established. MCCICC is coordinating different sectors at central level to address the CC issues. MoEnv has carried out several awareness programmes on environment management and climate change at local level. Several programmes and projects are being implemented at local level to identify and address CC related issues, and to make the development plans climate sensitive.
With the financial support of Asian Development Bank, different programmes are implementing in CC sector. Among the various programmes, one of the major programme is: capacitating local level planners in integrating and mainstreaming local environment management and climate change issues during planning process, implementation and monitoring and evaluation. Preparation of district level CC and Environment Management Guideline is prepared to fulfil the above objective. MoEnv handed over the responsibility of preparing this guideline to consortium of Samuhik Abhiyan, Rupantaran Nepal and NORMS. The consortium has thus prepared “District Level Training Guideline on Climate Change and Environment Management”.
This guideline incorporates general subject matter on CC and Environment Management, and fundamental process and steps to integrate these issues during local level planning process. Likewise this guideline also includes the impact of CC on NAPA identified six sectors, and national and local level initiatives and efforts to address these impacts. Similarly this guideline incorporates local level adaptation efforts on the six sectors (Agriculture and Food Security, Forests and Biodiversity, Water Resources and Energy, Public Health, Urban Settlement and Infrastructures, and Climate-induced Disasters).
This guideline has been prepared in different steps. First step focus on the subject matter of this guideline. Series of workshops with representatives of thematic ministries, experts of development partners, independent experts were conducted and their suggestion were materialised to prepare a draft outline. Likewise subjective experts amongst the consortium member interviewed with the staffs/employees of thematic ministries, departments, training divisions, and reviewed several relevant materials. Based on the preliminary report of experts, curriculum development specialist prepared a framework on the tentative subject matter. This framework was discussed with representatives of ministries, development partners and other experts and prepared a final draft of the guideline. All the stakeholders were involved in the preparation of this guideline which helped to develop ownership towards this guideline. Therefore the process helped to institutionalise this guideline with related ministries and other agencies.
The first draft was pre tested in Rupendehi District by operating five days training (three days general training and two days each for six thematic areas). Afterwards, five days ToT training was conducted in Kathmandu for employees of thematic ministries (training and planning division) and representatives of other organisations. Piloting of this guideline was conducted in Dang, Baglung and Dhading district. Government employee of districts and representative of district based organisations were involved in five days training (three days general training and two days each for six thematic areas). Feedbacks of these participants were also incorporated to make this guideline more practical and user friendly.
Source: ADB
