Bioprospecting as a Nature-based Solution for green mountain livelihoods: Priorities and implementation arrangements for a scaling strategy in Nepal

About the event

We are collaborating with the Department of Plant Resources (DPR), under the Ministry of Forest and Environment, Nepal, to advance the utilisation of bioprospecting as a Nature-based Solution (NbS) to foster sustainable green mountain livelihoods in Nepal.

This consultation workshop aims to finalise the implementation arrangements on key medicinal herbs under DPR’s leadership along with other relevant stakeholders in Bhutan.  The workshop is a part of ICIMOD’s Himalayan Resilience Enabling Action Programme (HI-REAP), supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) under the Climate Action for a Resilient Asia (CARA) initiative.

Objectives

The specific objectives include:

• Deeper understanding of challenges and emerging opportunities for effectively harnessing potential of bioprospecting as NbS in promoting livelihoods
• Co-develop a scaling strategy of bioprospecting as NbS solutions for applicability, with a focus on building capacity and promoting gender-responsive, climate-resilient and bioprospecting business development.

Background

ICIMOD together with partners in the regional member countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) is currently implementing HI-REAP – a nine-year programme that aims to build a cohesive and enabling regional environment for greener and more inclusive climate-resilient development pathways, creating the right policy and practice recommendations, and the institutional and investment environment to scale up new solutions.

One key focus area of HI-REAP is the wider-scale adoption of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and their promotion as key climate solutions. This requires close engagement with national and sub-national government institutions, communities, and regional and international partners to secure buy-in. Interventions under NbS include watershed management, ecological and landscape restoration, bioprospecting, and disaster risk reduction.

Bioprospecting holds potential nature-based livelihood options especially for countries, like Bhutan and Nepal, given the abundance and value of medicinal and aromatic plants in these areas. Consultations with national stakeholders in Bhutan and Nepal have identified several areas of improvement to harness the potential of bioprospecting as NbS for creating co-benefits for nature and people.

In particular, with bilateral consultation with DPR and other stakeholders, there is a need for intersectoral and multi-stakeholder engagements to identify and prioritise activities, including identification and prioritisation of bio-resources, making inventories on resources volumes, understanding markets, organising local community groups and building their capacity on sustainable production and harvesting and preliminary processing, developing sustainable harvesting plan and monitoring mechanism (including institutions), and product development based on phyto-ingredients and chemical compounds of selected biological resources (medicinal, aromatic and wild edible plants).