The Government of Nepal has recently made various efforts to integrate climate change in planning and budgeting across the sectors in order to make development programs climate responsive. Among these is a recently-endorsed Climate Change Financing Framework (CCFF) and a roadmap to guide mainstreaming climate actions into development plans and budgets and improve accountability and reporting on the effectiveness of climate investments. The roadmap further provides guidance to the sectoral ministries in SDG implementation and localization by ensuring that climate actions are well integrated into SDG-based plans and monitoring frameworks at all levels.

This policy brief examines impacts of climate change on agriculture productivity and opportunities to improve agriculture sector planning and budgeting based on CCFF recommendations and its implementation at sub-national levels under federal governance structure. This note also discusses the interlinkages between CCFF and SDG implementation, puts forward why policy reforms are critical to national interest.