Globalization and climate change have an increasing influence on the stability of fragile mountain ecosystems and the livelihoods of the Hindu Kush Himalaya’s mountain people. Further, other socioeconomic drivers of changes such as migration and changing lifestyle and food habits of mountain people also affect the people’s lives and livelihoods. It is thus important to understand the various drivers of changes so that the people can adapt to them and make the most of new opportunities to build resilience. In this regard, co-operatives as grass root institutions can play a vital role in building socioecological resilience by ensuring trust building, creating social safety nets, and developing resilient enterprises that are capable of managing risks and flourishing when other businesses would simply fail.

This one-day mutual learning and sharing workshop has been planned to understand the roles that cooperatives can play in enhancing communities’ resilience in Nepal. The workshop is being jointly organized by the National Cooperative Federation of Nepal Limited (NCFN) and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) on 22 October 2019 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The NCFN, established on 20 June 1993 under the Cooperatives Act 1992, is an apex body of cooperative movements of all types and levels of cooperatives organized on the basis of universally accepted cooperative values and principles. Currently, there are 34,512 primary cooperatives in Nepal engaged in various types of economic, social, and cultural development activities. Since 2016, the NCFN has been working to localize Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) throughout the country and has already prepared a comprehensive guideline on the roles of different level cooperatives in localizing and implementing SDG agendas.

ICIMOD’s Resilient Mountain Solution (RMS) Initiative, under the regional programme on Adaptation and Resilience Building, aims to enhance the resilience of women and men in the HKH to socioeconomic and environmental changes, including climate change, by up and out scaling resilient solutions. It also develops new knowledge and context-specific solution packages that are simple and affordable through pilots, collaborative research, field demonstrations, and strategic engagement with partners.

Objectives

This workshop aims to improve understanding how cooperatives can contribute to climate change adaptation and resilience building at the grassroots level by identifying new opportunities and overcoming any existing gaps.

The workshop’s specific objectives are as follows:

1. Sensitize the government, cooperatives, and other stakeholders on climate change and its socioeconomic impacts to strengthen adaptive management at grassroots levels and build resilience
2. Understand the possible roles of the Department of Cooperatives and NCFN in climate change adaptation and resilience building (issues, challenges, opportunities, and way forward).