Nepal – Just Transition Initiative

Summary

This case study analyzes the potential for climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to reduce women farmers’ labor burden in Nepal. CSA practices seek to improve agricultural productivity, build resilient food production systems, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CSA, in addition to reducing labor hours, has a significant role in expanding women’s access to agricultural resources and inclusion in decision-making processes. Therefore, CSA is an important tool in the transformation of global food systems in response to climate change.

Nepal was selected because of its low rank on gender-related development indicators, its increasing feminization of agriculture due to male out-migration, and its increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Rupandehi and Chitwan were randomly chosen as focal areas from a list of predetermined hotspots that have high levels of climate risk, poverty, and women’s participation in agriculture. The study sought to determine which CSA practices most reduced women’s labor burden in agriculture. The authors identify direct-seeded rice, zero-tillage machines, laser land leveling, and green manuring as the most effective practices.

Summary

This report discusses the various stakeholder narratives of “just energy transitions” and their claims to justice. The authors promote transformative alliances among these stakeholders to align their sustainable development strategies. They offer a set of eight principles to encourage and assess justice dimensions of energy transition processes in developing countries.

Using the proposed principles and their respective indicators, the authors evaluate twelve countries: China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam, Fiji, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Mexico. These countries were identified based on justice terminology within their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Performance among these countries was generally strongest in terms of their ambitious targets regarding climate and the alignment of their NDCs with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. These countries generally scored lower with respect to the socioeconomic dimension—such as ensuring or fostering “decent work and resilience,” “social equity,” and “gender equality”—and even lower in regard to the political dimension.

The paper concludes that countries claiming to be pioneers of just energy transitions do not necessarily perform better in terms of the social and political dimension, nor do those who claim to be pioneers regarding justice necessarily lead when it comes to climate ambition. The authors offer recommendations specific to each of the twelve countries and conclude with broadly applicable policy recommendations to better apply justice to energy transitions.