Decision making in the Global South has profound implications. Developing nations like Nepal must always do a balancing act between complementing a country’s pursuit for development with its sectoral limitations. In the case of Nepal, a country that has taken an active initiative in realizing its adaptation goals, climate change is a constant reminder of the difficulties in implementing timely and context-specific adaptation measures. More importantly, the need of the hour is climate aware decision making.

Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC)’s role in this regard is crucial in terms of training an able group of administrators and authorities that are contextually aware of the development needs of the country. With close support from members of HI-AWARE staff at ICIMOD, NASC plans to launch a revamped version of its training program revised based on real time practical knowledge. With the aim to develop a holistic training course, it is also realized that the NASC faculties need to stay abreast of the latest developments in this sector. Therefore, a long term interaction is planned through which joint research, collaborative events and other opportunities are planned where co-learning between NASC and ICIMOD can take place.

Recently, a daylong meeting between HI-AWARE researchers and faculty of the NASC was held at ICIMOD.  A modules of the 5 working days training course on CRM/DRM was discussed and revised.  The short training course is expected to focus on a range of aspects such as fundamentals of disaster management, and climate risk management; Impacts of climate change and disasters (climatic and non-climatic) on people and livelihoods; Policy/legal and institutional frameworks; Mainstreaming of DRM/CRM in development and Community based disaster risk management. Banking on the need to better share its research findings, HI-AWARE is relying on its Research-into-Use framework as a guiding principle. Through this, more opportunities can be created for co-learning and exchange of the climate science and social research that HI-AWARE has produced over its 5 year long history.