Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

3. The institutional opportunities and constraints
associated with adaptation measures
In this section we will discuss the various
institutional opportunities and constraints that
determine whether rural communities can benefit
from the implementation of adaptation measures.
It should be noted at the outset that very little has
been documented about community forestry
based adaptation strategies. Many communities
are of course already adapting to climate change,
and CFUGs play an important role in this, but the
issue would appear not to have been studied in
depth from this point of view. That said, a number
of institutional opportunities and constraints can
still be identified. Many of these are the same as
those for mitigation:
-Constraints: equitable sharing of benefits
and costs within CFUGs, lack of institutional
coherence, lack of policy and legal coherence,
awareness and access to information
-Opportunities: Functioning community forest
user groups, use rights are legally conferred to
the CFUGs through formal handover, strong civil
society representing forest users, constitutional
and legal reform process, donor readiness to
support Nepal
We will not describe these issues again, but
will focus on the following additional constraints
and opportunities:
1.1. Constraints
Limited assets and few livelihood options
Poor people in rural Nepal generally have
few livelihood options; their livelihoods are
primarily dependent on natural resources,
particularly the climate sensitive sectors of
forestry, agriculture and fisheries. Rural Nepalese
are highly vulnerable to adverse weather
conditions that affect their crops, animals, water
sources and other natural resources. For
example, agriculture accounts for about 96% of
the water use in Nepal and suffers a lot from
erratic weather patterns since 64% of the
cultivated area fully depends on monsoon rainfall
(Chaudhary and Aryal, 2009). Furthermore, rural
Nepalese have very few assets to recover and
rebuild livelihoods after climatic stresses. While
many roads and bridges have been built over the
last 50 years, and other infrastructure developed,
many people still live several days walk from the
nearest road head, and without ready access to
basic facilities such as drinking water, health
services, schools or electricity. The basis of the
rural economy is labour-intensive agriculture,
cultivating fragile soils and raising livestock for
low returns. Land fragmentation is extreme and
many households have insufficient land for food
security. Given that opportunities for earning
beyond a basic wage are scarce, seasonal or
longer term migration (to urban areas in Nepal
as well as internationally) is a widely practiced
strategy. Returning migrants can bring welcome
capital to invest locally, but there is a cost
associated with their absence that is often born
by the women and children left behind (though
increasingly young women also migrate). Absent
people cannot contribute their labour to the
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