ICIMOD and Practical Action, Nepal will be conducting a stakeholders consultation workshop on 15th February, 2016 under ICIMOD’s research initiative called the Himalayan Adaptation, Water and Resilience (HIAWARE) Research on Glacier and Snowpack Dependent River Basins for Improving Livelihoods. The workshop is part of HIAWARE’s stakeholder engagement strategy to put ‘research into use’ (RiU) with a focus on the downstream region of the Gandaki River Basin in Nepal. Similar consultation workshops are planned to be held in the near future for the mid-stream and up-stream regions of the river basin.

The primary purpose of the workshop is to capture the stakeholders’ perspective/s regarding:

(a) key adaptation needs linked to specific climatic hazards,
(b) desired policy and practice interventions to address these needs,
(c) desired information needs related to climate risk projections, and
(d) institutional factors that are perceived to act as either “barriers” or “bridges” to reducing vulnerability.

The workshop will have around 30 local level participants, including people’s representatives in VDCs / District Councils, government officials from district-level line agencies (especially those involved in planning, monitoring & local-level decision making), representatives of formal community institutions/associations (e.g. head of a CFUG, local traders’ association, etc), local NGOs and academic organizations, locally operating heads/coordinators of development/adaptation programmes of bilaterals & multi-laterals, and private sector representatives if any (especially from tourism sector).

During the workshop the participants will be organized into three working groups under the categories: (public) policy makers, (information & technology) service providers, and user groups, to get multiple perspectives. For the day-long workshop, it is planned to have two facilitated sessions for the working groups. The first session will focus on (a) & (c), whereas the second session will focus on (b) & (d). The workshop facilitators will be introducing some simple tools to capture the information on these aspects.

The information produced from the workshop will be useful for HIAWARE scientists to customize their research outputs.