Agriculture based livelihoods in developing countries are bearing significant negative impacts due to climate change. In this scenario, agroforestry is one of the best alternatives to cope with climate change and disaster risks. However, the agroforestry approaches adopted in the past were sectoral and partial, and were insufficient to contribute to socio-economic wellbeing and resilient communities. Nepal has been implementing package-based integrated agroforestry since 2016. It is a project approach to advance agroforestry practices by including disaster mitigation, land and water management, and community development activities. This paper reflects on the process and outcomes of the agroforestry practices, implemented by the government in seven super zones of Nepal. The programs have shown fairly satisfactory output in building adaptive capacity to climate change, awareness and active participation in agroforestry development activities. This paper reveals that agroforestry alone cannot be sustained, and hence, it has to be integrated with land productivity enhancement, natural resource management, climate change adaptation, and livelihood support in addition to tree planting in agricultural lands. This paper is crucial in understanding the scope of the package-based integrated agroforestry approach to build climate resilient communities.

After the introduction of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, existing development institutions are being assessed for their roles in achieving SDGs. In this context, we aim to assess how and to what extent Nepal’s community forestry (CF) is contributing to achieve the SDGs. Using an institutional interaction perspective, we conducted policy analysis, literature review and expert consultation. The analysis was guided by six analytical questions covering policy provision, institutional practices, and actors’ perception. After four decades of successful implementation, CF has become a strong local institution in Nepal to deliver multiple social and environmental outcomes. The result shows that CF is contributing to 80 targets of the SDGs at various scales of institutional interface. Furthermore, CF is found to be interactive with a range of social, economic, and environmental aspects of the SDGs. We argue that CF has the potential to make significant contributions to SDGs, thus providing a solid institutional framework to efficiently translate SDGs into actions.

As a stewardship for watershed services, an incentivizing mechanism of payment for ecosystem services (PES) has been increasingly discussed in global policy arena. In this context, various models of incentivizing mechanisms have been implemented as a pilot program. This study assesses the existing financing mechanisms for watershed services at the national level and examines the pilot PES programs that have been implemented in four different sites of Nepal. Using various participatory and qualitative research methods; this study analyses institutional arrangement, operational procedures and implementation practices from the study sites. Our findings reveal that the pilot PES programs have shown fairly satisfactory outcomes in watershed management. Based on our findings, we argue that the PES mechanism can be a promising approach in financing sustainable watershed management in Nepal. Nevertheless, PES mechanism should be flexible and contextual in terms of institutional arrangement and needs to be strengthened with a strong linkage between service providers and service users, through a regulatory mechanism. An intermediary role of the local government is found to be utmost important to institutionalize the PES mechanism as a sustainable financing mechanism for ensuring watershed services in Nepal.