Capacity Building

Although faced with many development challenges, the Government of Nepal (GoN) is committed to the goals of the various international conventions. As a least developing country that relies on biomass for the majority (approx. 87%) of the country’s energy needs, Nepal’s global contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is insignificant. Nepal’s topography and climatic regime makes the country particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climatic changes, such as glacial lake outburst floods. These are the main cause of the country’s land degradation, mainly in agricultural, forest, and pastures lands. The predominantly agrarian-based economy of Nepal thus makes land degradation a top environment and development priority. Land degradation also affect’s Nepal’s biodiversity, which is globally significant.

Major challenge for Nepal is limited resources and institutional capacities to address the country’s poverty and lack of alternative livelihood options. Majority of Nepal’s population depends on agriculture and forest-based livelihoods. Government recognizes that poverty alleviation can only be sustainable through sound environmental management and systematic assessment of institutional and individual capacities necessary to implement the environment management plan.

Although different government ministries and their sister organizations are also equally involved for their capacity enhancement to cope with the threats imposed by various environmental issues through their policy, plans and programs but efficient and appropriate professionals are still lacking. The country is located in the environmentally sensitive region therefore it needs to be well equipped with all sorts of capacities to tackle the environmental challenges. In this regard Ministry of Environment and Science has responsibility to address overall development of the national capacities on environment related issues. Almost all the development ministries have environment division to deal with the environment related matters during development and implementation of projects.