This document, Climate-resilient Planning: A tool for long-term climate adaptation, is intended to facilitate ministries, departments and development organizations in analyzing sector-specific climate issues with a greater understanding of climate variables at the local level and in adopting measures to reduce the emerging and anticipated climate threats which face development plans and programs. It is hoped that the proposed tools will help see climate concerns being integrated into development plans and programs at the implementation level.
The government of Nepal has accorded high priority to addressing climate issues. It has initiated several measures, including the preparation of a national plan of action that deals with immediate and urgent needs and the implementation of a pilot program on adaptation. In addition, it has responded to the global call to mitigate climate change by launching initiatives in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). While these efforts do indicate that action to address some of the critical issues of climate change is underway, there is still a need to mainstream climate-risk management in long-term plans and policies, and in particular, to integrate climate risks and risk reduction efforts into periodic development plans.
For this reason, the National Planning Commission (NPC), in its approach paper to the three-year interim plan of 2011-2013, emphasized the need to adopt a mechanism to screen development plans and programs and make them climate-resilient. It envisioned integrating current and future vulnerabilities into the planning process, enhancing climate knowledge at the implementation level, and identifying areas for inter-sectoral cooperation aimed at building synergy in efforts to address long-term climate threats. The NPC received technical support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in developing ways to screen its plans for natural resources and the water, transportation and infrastructure sectors and from the UNDP in screening disaster risk reduction plans. The insights generated during the screening process have been invaluable in launching climate-resilient planning. This publication presents the methods and tools that were developed in the expectation that they will benefit planners as well as development organizations.