An assessment of potential synergies and trade-offs between climate mitigation and adaptation policies of Nepal

Abstract

Climate actions are centered on either mitigation or adaptation or both. Mitigation and adaptation actions can interact with each other resulting in synergies or tradeoffs. An integrated approach that considers these interactions is important to harness the synergies to create win-win situations and to avoid trade-offs for no-regret decisions. In this context, this study presents a qualitative analysis of the existing national level climate policies of Nepal to identify the extent and mechanism of their mitigation-adaptation interactions based on expert survey. Four key sectors having inter-relationships between mitigation and adaptation were identified as Agriculture, Forestry and Land use (AFOLU), urban planning, energy and water. We used Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to rank and prioritize the opportunities and barriers for harnessing synergies and avoiding trade-offs of mitigation-adaptation interlinkage with these sectors in view. Our results show that such interactions in the Nepalese policy context are present mostly in the form of synergies in the order of AFOLU > Urban Planning > Energy > Water. We identified that developing an institution dedicated to climate change at the national level is the most important opportunity while inadequate institutional co-ordination is the most important barrier for harnessing these synergies.

Keywords: Barriers; Climate change; Mitigation-adaptation; Nepal; Synergy and trade-offs.