Proceedings of International Conference on Climate Change Innovation and Resilience for Sustainable Livelihood 12-14 January 2015 Kathmandu, Nepal Organizers: The Small Earth Nepal (SEN) City University of New York (CUNY), USA Colorado State University (CSU), USA Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Government of Nepal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Nepal Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU), Nepal Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), Nepal Editors: Dr. Soni Pradhananga, University of Rhode Island, USA Jeeban Panthi, The Small Earth Nepal, Nepal Dilli Bhattarai, The Small Earth Nepal Executive Summary Climate change is one of the most crucial environmental, social, and economic issues the world is facing today. Some impacts such as increasing heat stress, more intense floods, prolonged droughts, and rising sea levels have now become inevitable. Climatic extremes are becoming more frequent; wet periods are becoming wetter and dry periods are becoming dryer. People are able to describe the impacts faced by climate change but not the meaning of „climate change‟. The impacts are most severe for the poor countries. It is high time to plan and implement adaptive measures to minimize the adverse impacts due to climate change, and it is important to explore innovative ideas and practices in building resilience for sustainable development and livelihood, particularly in rural areas of developing countries which are highly vulnerable to climate change. Climate innovation and technologies involve basic science and engineering as well as information dissemination, capacity building, and community organizing. In this context an International Conference on Climate Change Innovation and resilience for Sustainable Livelihood was held in Kathmandu, Nepal from 12-14 January 2015. The objective of the conference was to provide a forum for researchers, students, scientists and policy planners to exchange ideas, communicate and discuss research findings and new advances in climate change innovations. The three-day conference focused on innovative approaches from the physical and social sciences to support economic development in mountain and lowland South Asia, which faces serious climate hazards along with food security, water, and soil management and environmental challenges of justice. Himalaya is one of the data poor regions in the world, and there are two major factors contributing to data gaps: lacking measurements/observations and not having a common platform to share the scattered data that are being collected/used by various agencies. There is a missing link between data producers and users. Planners and policy makers need past data as well as future scenarios and expert interpretation of what the numbers imply, therefore, it is very essential to establish a common data sharing platform for planning climate resilient development strategies. Even if the currently still increasing greenhouse gas emissions end today, the atmosphere will continue warming for decades to come. Therefore, conference presenters stressed that we need to go for pluralistic approaches of climate resilience for mitigating impacts on people and ecosystems. Planetary and ecosystem services need to be explored and used properly. Not only science generates innovation, but also there are local innovations those need to be explored, scaled up and replicated. It is very essential to adopt a climate-smart approach of site-specific co- production of knowledge and co-creation of innovations merging scientists' facts and already proven local indigenous knowledge which are already proven in field for sustainable livelihood. There is a huge lack of institutional ability to disseminate information in local and central levels. It is essential to translate scientific facts to the users' language, which is a major challenge. Scalability, diffusion, adoption and capacity building should all be considered in research and development efforts. I Preamble There is now a large body of evidence that human activities are one of the major contributors to climate change. The global warming is now overwhelmingly beyond dispute and several long- term changes in the world‟s climate are currently witnessed in many parts of the world. In the Fourth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), experts estimated that between 1970 and 2004, global greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities rose by 70 percent. Changing weather patterns, sea level rise, melting of glaciers, severe weather events, health problems, shortage of energy and damage to city infrastructure and the ecosystem are only some of the effects of climate change. Climate change poses a serious challenge to social and economic development. Some impacts such as increasing heat stress, more intense floods, droughts, and rising sea levels have now become inevitable concerns. Developing countries are particularly vulnerable because their economies are generally more dependent on climate-sensitive natural resources, and are less able to cope with the impacts of climate change. It is high time to plan and implement adaptive measures to minimize the adverse impacts of climate change In the meantime, it is important to explore innovative ideas and practices on building resilience and climate change adaptation for sustainable development and livelihood, particularly for rural sectors of developing countries which are under high vulnerability to climate change. Climate innovation and technologies involve basic science and engineering as well as information dissemination, capacity building, and community organizing. To advance knowledge on climate change innovation for building resilience and promoting sustainable livelihood, an international conference was held in Kathmandu, Nepal on 12-14 January 2015. The conference was a joint effort of The Small Earth Nepal (SEN), City University of New York (CUNY) and Colorado State University (CSU), Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC) and Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU), Nepal. Several organizations had supported the conference technically and financially, including USAID/ Livestock Innovation Lab, USAID/Hariyo Ban program, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), and The World Academy of Science (TWAS). II Objectives The objective of the conference was to provide a forum for researchers, students, scientists to exchange ideas, to communicate and discuss research findings and new advances in climate change innovations. The three-day conference focused on innovative approaches from the physical and social sciences to support economic development in mountain and lowland South Asia, which faces serious climate hazards along with food security, water, and soil management and environmental challenges of justice. The conference brought together eminent scientists, researchers, policy makers and development workers in nonprofit and for-profit enterprises to discuss promising new approaches for integrating science, policy, and action. Themes of the Conference The research abstracts were called from multidisciplinary areas under the following four major themes: • Climate Change: Climate Science and Modeling, Impacts and Adaptation Assessment, Hazard Prediction and Preparedness • Water Resource Management: Hydrologic Modeling, Snow and Glacier, Governance, Efficiency and Sustainability • Agriculture and Livestock: Crop Modeling, Soil and Water Management for Resilience, Food Security, Forestry, Ecology and Biodiversity • Gender and Livelihood: Health, Environmental Justice, Development for Marginalized Groups, Infrastructure for Poverty Alleviation III Summary of Panel Discussions The panel discussion moderated by Soni M. Pradhanang included panelists. Nir Krakauer, A.L (Tom Hammet) and Bronwyn Llewellyn, revolved around the topic: “Incentives to Deliver Climate Smart Natural Resource Management: Identifying Missing Links”. It focused on co- creation of solutions to climate change where people from all levels (farmers, scientists/researchers, policymakers, etc.) are involved and speak the same "language" in order to come up with viable solutions, developing communication strategy in order to create and deliver products at the community level. Issues like how can the data gaps be addressed, how can the scientific work be translated to local people without creating too much of scientific jargon, dissemination of knowledge from scientific level to the grass root level were addressed in the session. It is seen that at the grass root level people are often confused between “weather” and “climate”, thus ending up mixing up the two and thinking in terms of shorter period rather than longer time frame (i.e. next few seasons rather than next 50 years). To address these issues the session emphasized on the need to work with the local partners who can understand both sides (scientific and local) and translate the scientific data into local lexicon. Similarly, the necessity of adopting needs for scalability, building local capacity for adaptation and mitigation in order to mainstream these practices, making the information more accessible, understandable, timely, and relevant to the situation at hand were the focal discussion areas of the session one panel discussion. The next panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Madan Lall Shrestha, and Dr. Ajay Jha with panelists