Min Bahadur Shrestha, ICIMOD Board Member and Vice-Chairman of Nepal’s National Planning Commission, unveiling the infographic on women as risk and resource managers included in the adaptation solution brief

Adaptation Solution Brief: Strengthening women’s roles as risk and resource managers at the frontline of climate change

Launched by Nand Kishor Agrawal, Programme Coordinator for the HICAP initiative, the first of the two products was a solution brief titled “Strengthening women’s roles as risk and resource managers at the frontline of climate change”. Mr. Agrawal emphasized that the brief on gender—a culmination of years of research and collected data—allowed for a holistic understanding of women adapting to multiple changes in the HKH. Briefly discussing the contents of the booklet, Agrawal mentioned that almost 33% of mountain households have at least one migrating male, and that 11% of the mountain households are managed by women. These new roles are a double-edged sword, as women are vulnerable in managing tasks previously handled exclusively by men. He further stated that women are increasingly vulnerable as only 8% of women have exclusive land ownership.

Referring to the infographic included in the brief, Agrawal stated that increasing women’s roles in all aspects of the public sphere ensured building of adaptive capacities. He suggested simple solutions to help women overcome vulnerabilities:

• Investing in financial literacy, leadership, and disaster preparedness training for women.
• Developing and extending financial services that take into account women’s needs, time constraints, and limited social mobility.
• Sensitizing gatekeepers and policymakers in formal bodies to secure women’s participation in the decision-making process.
• Promoting women-friendly and time-saving as well as inexpensive agricultural and household technologies to ensure efficiency and reduce workload.
• Securing women’s access to insurance and banking services irrespective of land ownership and assets.
• Increasing recruitment of women staff particularly in extension services and other frontline departments.

The solutions brief can be downloaded from HERE.

Web-based Poverty and Vulnerability Assessment (PVA) tool

Min Bahadur Shrestha, ICIMOD Board Member and Vice-Chairman of Nepal’s National Planning Commission, launching the Poverty and Vulnerability Assessment (PVA) website

Min Bahadur Shrestha, ICIMOD Board Member and Vice-Chairman of Nepal’s National Planning Commission, launched the PVA website, which provides a one-stop address for open access data on a large scale household assessment, fine-tuned to incorporate mountain-specific elements. The data made available on the website is based on surveys conducted in 8,083 households in four river sub-basins – the Koshi in Nepal, the Eastern Brahmaputra in India, the Upper Indus in Pakistan, and the Salween-Mekong in China.

ICIMOD developed the PVA tool over the last decade by adapting and field-testing globally recognized approaches to socioeconomic and livelihood vulnerability assessments. It is essentially a household level, large-scale assessment of livelihood vulnerability and its determinants, and the adaptive capacities of people in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. The tool can be further used in mapping of target areas and serves as a baseline for in-depth studies.

Users can download data on 43 indicators, mapped across four sub-basins and 21 districts/counties. Users can choose to download the selected data as csv or xls, or generate charts and graphs for usage in reports and/or literature. Depending on the type of indicators and variables selected, users can generate up to four different types of charts for download.

The PVA website is targeted towards ICIMOD’s regional partner countries, strategic partners, academicians, researchers, and policy makers.

The PVA website can be accessed HERE.

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