‘What the Monkey ate before, and what he is eating now’ : a small-scale case study of local climate change adaptation in rural Nepal

Abstract: Community-based adaptation (CBA), a decentralized bottom-up climate planning approach, has become increasingly important in the corresponding literature and in practice. CBA is a significant part of the debate of how to create and provide sustainable and adaptive solutions to the negative effects of climate change. Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPA) in Nepal is the first national legislation implementing CBA on a broader scale. By giving communities an opportunity to participate in local climate planning processes, LAPA aims to better incorporate site-specific climate-, geographical, and socio-economic realities into the development of responses to climate risk and climate change. LAPA therefore intends to recognise local people as active agents to foster their resilience and adaptive capacity. This study examines the benefits and limitations of LAPA to gain new insights for future CBA-based climate adaptive projects. Focus was given on how participatory LAPA is in practice and whether implemented projects help to reduce a community’s climate vulnerability. Data collection occurred in four districts of Nepal (Kathmandu District, Ramechhap, Dang and Chitwan) and generated 24 interviews using qualitative research methods. The findings reveal that much LAPA-planning does not incorporate all stakeholders as specifically local participation is limited to labour only. Hence, crucial site-specific socioeconomic realities are missing in the planning and implementation process. The study shows that realizing the objectives of CBA in the case of LAPA is not likely to be a straightforward effect of participatory policies, but requires deeper institutional changes to bring about more substantive local participation. At the same time, attention to the wide range of challenges that households face, both climatic and non-climatic, is needed to address the conditions that make households vulnerable in the first place. Initiatives based on LAPA aiming to address these factors are already being implemented in Nepal.