With a clear CSAF roadmap, aligned policies, and targeted investment, Nepal can translate climate risk into restored landscapes, stronger rural incomes, and durable carbon gains—a transformation rooted in the country’s own communities, forests, and fields.
As climate pressures mount across Nepal’s farms and forests, scientists are coalescing around a pragmatic solution: climate-smart agroforestry (CSAF). In a new chapter of Agriculture Sector Transformation in Nepal: A Roadmap(Springer Nature, 2025), World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) researchers and national policy veterans lay out how integrating trees with crops and livestock can restore degraded land, bolster food security, and strengthen community resilience—while storing carbon.
RELEVANT SUSTAINABLE GOALS
Co-authored by Dr. Himlal Baral (CIFOR-ICRAF), former environment secretary Dr. Bishwa Nath Oli, and Dr. Jagadish Timsina of the Institute for Study and Development Worldwide, the chapter—Climate-Smart Agroforestry for Sustainable Landscapes and Agri-Food Systems’ Transformation in Nepal—calls for CSAF to be mainstreamed across national agricultural and land-use policies. “Nepal’s agricultural and forest landscapes are deeply interconnected,” Baral notes. “Climate-smart agroforestry offers an integrated solution: it restores degraded land, diversifies farm income and sequesters carbon, while strengthening the resilience of communities and ecosystems.”
Bridging Agriculture, Forestry and Climate Policy
Drawing on evidence from across Nepal, the authors highlight a suite of agroforestry systems—alley cropping, silvopastoral models, and community-based woodlots—that deliver multiple ecosystem services: improved soil fertility, watershed protection, biodiversity conservation, and carbon storage. Yet despite these benefits, agroforestry remains fragmented across sectors and largely excluded from formal agricultural programs.
To close the gap, the chapter proposes a national CSAF roadmap anchored in a policy “nexus approach” that links agriculture, forestry, and climate agendas. Priorities include:
- Strengthening climate and agricultural information services for farmers.
- Conserving agrobiodiversity with site-specific tree–crop combinations.
- Developing value chains for fruits, timber, essential oils, and bamboo with private-sector partnerships.
- Building capacity in CSAF technologies for farmers, technicians, and local governments.
- Investing in research and infrastructure to quantify ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration and ecotourism potential.
“Agroforestry is not only about trees and crops,” Oli underscores. “It is about policies that recognize multifunctional landscapes as engines of sustainable development.”
Aligned With Nepal’s Transformation Agenda
The CSAF framework nests within Nepal’s broader agricultural transformation—a shift from subsistence to modern, market-oriented and sustainable agri-food systems. It complements national strategies including the Forestry Sector Strategy (2016–2025), the National Adaptation Plan (2021–2050) and Nepal’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution 3.0 (NDC, 20250)—all of which emphasize integrating trees into farms to support mitigation and adaptation.
According to Timsina, scaling CSAF could help Nepal meet its commitment to restore at least 0.5 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, while enhancing smallholder livelihoods. “By scaling agroforestry,” he says, “Nepal can transform its agri-food systems from vulnerability to resilience, linking local action to global sustainability goals.”
A Model for South Asia’s Mountain Economies
CIFOR-ICRAF’s Asia-wide research shows that well-designed agroforestry systems can store up to five times more carbon than annual croplands, while supplying food, fodder, and fuel. Building on this evidence, the authors urge integrating agroforestry into local development planning and climate finance mechanisms, including carbon and ecosystem-service payment schemes.
They also elevate the role of community forestry networks, cooperatives, and private enterprises in scaling CSAF—particularly via tree nurseries, value-added processing, and improved market access—so agroforestry becomes both profitable and climate-positive.
Nepal’s decades of experience with community forestry and participatory natural-resource management offer lessons for other mountainous countries facing similar climate and livelihood pressures. As Baral observes: “If Nepal can make agroforestry central to its agricultural transformation, it could inspire a new generation of climate-smart farmers across South Asia.”
Lead image courtesy of Mokhamad Edliadi / CIFOR-ICRAF (An aerial view of Nalma village in Nepal’s hills shows terraced farms, forests and settlements woven into a single mountain landscape)
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