This site uses cookies, as explained in our terms of use. If you consent, please close this message and continue to use this site.
In a quest to bring more profitable agriculture to Phungling in eastern Nepal, city leaders and planners sat down with experts from ICIMOD’s Himalica initiative to devise a five-year plan that will address current challenge to farmers seeking to move from subsistence techniques to modern technologies.
Located in Taplejung, Phungling is a pilot project site for the Himalica programme supported by the European Union. Approximately 45 participants, including the mayor and deputy mayor, attended a two-day workshop to devise an agricultural development strategy for the area. The plan will not only lay out possibilities for assisting local farmers but also provide important guidance on future budget allocation to support more commercial forms of cultivation, such as cardamom, a high-value crop for export.
2 mins Read
At the inaugural session, Chhatrapati Pyakurel, the mayor of Phungling, said the Municipality expects to see a shift in traditional subsistence mountain farming to commercialization of agriculture and adoption of modern technologies and practices to address past and existing problems in agriculture sector in general, and finding solutions to manage disease in pest in cardamom and get the right price of large cardamom in the international market. While speaking in the inaugural session, Deputy Mayor, Bam Bahadur Bhattarai thanked the Himalica team from ICIMOD and ECDF for their support.
Himalica Programme Coordinator Surendra Raj Joshi thanked all the newly elected representatives and ward officials for inviting ICIMOD to facilitate the workshop, and said the workshop will discuss where to take agriculture in the next five years and how to reduce risks coming from the market, climate change, and other factors. Joshi also said they would look at agriculture from food security, value chain, and enterprise development points of view. In his presentation, Joshi cited examples of agricultural transformation from Himachal Pradesh, India and other parts of the Hindu Kush Himalaya.
ECDF Chair Kumar Siwa; SABAH’s Executive Director Robin Amatya and Associate Professor of Rampur Agriculture College Rishi Kattel also provided good wishes during inaugural session while appreciating the initiative taken by newly elected local government to come up with a draft strategy that will take into account people’s aspirations in terms of agricultural development such as how to commercialize agriculture, make it more sustainable, link it to tourism, build agri-based enterprises, and develop technical capacity in agriculture.
After the inaugural session, Min Bdr. Gurung of ICIMOD, oriented the participants on the steps that would be followed over the next two days to come up with an agriculture development strategy.
As part of the first step, various representatives from ICIMOD, ECDF and city agencies established the ‘baseline”, so all participants could decide “where they needed to go” in the next five years. For the second step, participants were broken up into five groups and asked to do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of agriculture based on their own experiences and observations.
Step three began on day two when guidelines and tools were shared to conduct the visioning exercise for agricultural development. Participants were divided into four groups to write a vision statement on what changes or scenarios they wanted to see in agriculture in the long term. All four groups presented their versions of the vision statement at the plenary, where the most promising vision statement was tweaked. As part of the fifth step, the participants worked in groups to list four-five strategic goals, including actions under each strategic goal and key indicators and timeline for each action.
Although the vision and strategic goals and actions were presented at the plenary, there were many questions and issues raised about the actions and indicators which need to be further worked out before it can be submitted to the Phungling Municipality Council for approval.
They agreed on a vision and strategic objectives, which are summarized below.
“Create employment and make competitive, tourism-centric, self-sufficient, inclusive, and prosperous municipality through sustainable agriculture development”
When developing an annual plan to achieve the above strategic goals, the planner should give due consideration to the development of climate-resilient, inclusive, women-friendly and integrated agricultural system.
Share
Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.
RELATED CONTENTS
The HKH region is energy poor in spite of its vast potential for hydropower and other sources of energy such ...
Hundreds of earthquake-affected families in Ratanchaura and Baseshwor Village Development Committees (VDCs) of Sindhuli district are no longer sitting in ...
#塑战速决 (#BeatPlasticPollution) –今年世界环境日的三项行动 似乎没有任何地方可以免受塑料污染浪潮的影响:即使是地球之巅。上周在当地社区、登山者和政要前往纪念珠峰人类首登 70 周年时,ICIMOD 发起了我们新的 #拯救我们的雪(#SaveOurSnow)活动——一段视频显示被留在珠峰(南坡)大本营的堆积如山的塑料制品和其他垃圾的消息迅速传播开来。 但我们这代人可以扭转塑料潮流吗?随着谈判代表离开巴黎,同意起草一份具有国际法律约束力的条约草案以终结塑料污染,而在设立世界环境日的50周年呼吁采取集体行动来抵制它,有充分的理由充满希望。 同样重要的是,我们有充分的理由采取行动:塑料工业不仅是世界上增长最快的工业温室气体来源,而且塑料废物极大地加剧了兴都库什-喜马拉雅地区现有的气候变化、生物多样性丧失和污染等问题,ICIMOD 的 南亚网络开发和环境经济学(South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics ,简称SANDEE)。原因如下: 气候:固体废物——其中大部分是塑料——堵塞了排水系统,并增加了破坏性洪水,即由全球变暖引发的更频繁且更强烈的降雨事件引发的洪水。 生物多样性:塑料垃圾可能需要数百年才能分解,它们堵塞水道,其中的有害化学物质渗入土壤和水中,影响陆地和水生生物、生态系统和人类健康。 ...
Krishna Poudel, the president of the society, chaired the programme. Welcoming guests to the programme, he highlighted the activities of ...
The event brought together over 300 climate scientists, adaptation policy makers, and practitioners with the goal of finding more holistic ...
Women’s Day brings into focus women situated at various intersections of class, age, caste, race, education, culture, and geographical location. ...
“There are unprecedented challenges to achieving three goals at a time: poverty reduction, climate resilience, and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, ...
On 17 May 2022, we held a hybrid inception meeting to strengthen the development, planning, and implementation of the