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Nature and purpose

Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) is a non-profit making, non-governmental organization established in 1995 in Pokhara, Nepal. LI-BIRD is registered with the District Administrative Office of Kaski (Regd. No. 217/025/053) and affiliated with the Social Welfare Council (Regd. No. 3394).

LI-BIRD is committed to capitalizing on local initiatives for sustainable management of renewable natural resources in order to improve the livelihoods of rural poor and marginalized farmers, especially women.

Through partnerships in development oriented research in agriculture and natural resources management, LI-BIRD has contributed to several innovate methodologies and approaches for participatory research and development. It has generated impacts that have enhanced the livelihoods of rural poor and marginalized farmers through appropriate technological, social and policy changes.
LI-BIRD has been a pioneer organization in strengthening participatory methodologies for research and development in agriculture, biodiversity conservation and sustainable natural resource management. LI-BIRD has played an instrumental role in institutionalizing these approaches in the national systems of Nepal.

Areas of work

LI-BIRD works through the following three strategic programmes at different levels of engagements (household, community and landscape) to achieve the overall impact goal of the organization.
The Agricultural Innovations for Livelihood Security programme addresses bottlenecks at the household or group level by tailoring solutions to the specific needs of farmers. The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Livelihoods programme works at the community and landscape levels. It focuses on empowering farmers to manage and safeguard the biological and ecosystem bases for their livelihoods. Finally, the Community Resilience to Climate Change programme focuses on mainstreaming climate change awareness as well as integrating vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning into LI-BIRD's, civil society organizations' and government partners' development and policy actions. The implementation or delivery of these programmes will be supported and strengthened by three crosscutting themes namely, Social Research and Policy Advocacy for Inclusive Impacts, Gender Equity and Social Inclusion, and Knowledge Management and Capacity Building for Wider Impacts.

Advocacy Strategy

LI-BIRD has been contributing to policy advocacy and generating evidences from field to strengthen the scientific basis of climate change adaptation. The concept of networking and capacity building of NGOs was expanded from 2008 after a successful pilot in 2007 effectively formed a loose network of local NGOs (NGO Network on Climate Change - NGONCC) working in the field of climate change. LI-BIRD hosts the NGONCC secretariat, with five regional secretariats as hubs that coordinate district level NGOs. LI-BIRD is coordinating Climate Change Network Nepal (CCNN) at the national level and LI-BIRD is also represented in the board of the Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) as a member of the Board of Directors.

The NGONCC network has now 125 members from across the country and has been instrumental in generating evidences on climate change and acting as a bridge for national and international networks in providing grassroots information. The international progress on negotiations and relevance are also transferred to the members through the same channel. It has significantly contributed to providing feedback, comments and suggestions in different areas like capacity building of GOs/NGOs, facilitating mainstreaming and integration of CCA into development planning process, creating a feedback loop for discussions on climate change policy and national adaptation framework (NAPA, LAPA) preparations.

In 2013, the three year strategy (2014-2016) of NGONCC network was prepared- with support from "Strengthening CSOs and Community Response to Climate Change in Nepal" project, which identifies three priority agendas for advocacy, capacity building and dialogues at different levels:

  • Provide policy feedback and support to Government of Nepal to prepare National Climate Change Act through consultative process
  • Mainstream climate change adaptation in local development plans to build and sustain community resilience
  • Assess climate finance received or to be received by the country

The strategy is currently being implemented through NGO Network on Climate Change with support from the Development Fund Norway.

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