Institutionalizing learning as a strategy to scale up Nepal’s climate adaptation programs

WWF Nepal organized a workshop on Learning for Climate Change Adaptation Program on 10-13 September, 2012. The workshop was organized in order to streamline and institutionalize learning as a key organizational strategy for WWF Nepal. Climate change adaptation was selected as a first thematic area to incorporate learning practices in the initial phase.

The workshop was attended by a total of 22 participants primarily from WWF Nepal and also included representatives from the WWF Network (WWF Colombia, WWF UK), DFID Nepal and local communities implementing and benefiting from the climate change adaptation project in Langtang National Park Buffer Zone (LNPBZ). The workshop was facilitated by a knowledge management expert, Dr. John D Colvin, from the UK.

The objective of the workshop was to understand the role of learning in climate change adaptation. The workshop focused on capturing learning histories through WWF Nepal’s climate change work and then built around the climate change adaptation pilot project in LNPBZ as a case study. The learning processes were then used to develop a road map and a way forward for future climate change adaptation program strategizing, planning, and implementation in WWF Nepal’s program areas, the Terai Arc Landscape and Sacred Himalayan Landscape.

WWF Nepal’s climate adaptation program which was piloted in LNPBZ in 2009 was a blend of scientific knowledge and local intelligence; the program worked on an integrated approach to climate change adaptation by focusing on both communities and ecosystems. The approach was built on four pillars – building community awareness, addressing disaster risk reduction, building community and ecosystem resilience, and mainstreaming climate smart policies.

The workshop was, in effect, an entry point to the bigger knowledge management platform that WWF Nepal is developing to guide future programs. By documenting the learnings from the pilot project in Langtang, scale up and scale out of such activities in new sites and context is expected to be instrumental in mainstreaming climate change adaptation planning, designing and implementation in local development initiative while being climate smart and adding value for money spent.