Kathmandu, Nepal - The Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) organized the LoCAL Annual Review Workshop in Chitwan district of Nepal on 19-20 April 2016, with the district and the Village Development Committee (VDC) level stakeholders from the LoCAL pilot districts of Dhading and Rupandehi.
Participants shared practical field experiences in the Dhading and Rupandehi pilot districts and exchanged lessons learned from LoCAL implementation, in part also to create a common understanding of implementation modalities of LoCAL. Furthermore MoFALD presented lessons from the Government of Nepal’s Environment Friendly Local Governance Programme (EFLGP) and the complementarities with the LoCAL programme were discussed.

LoCAL Annual Review Workshop in Chitwan district of Nepal on 19-20 April 2016 ©LOCAL-UNCDF

The workshop was also organized to review the progress of the ongoing work plan and to discuss and fine-tune the FY 2016/17 Climate Change Adaptation Plans for which LoCAL will provide the Climate Resilience Grants (second-year allocation). It was concluded that the adaptation projects financed under the LoCAL Climate Resilience Grants were very appropriate and appreciated by communities. Furthermore in most cases VDCs showed adequate capacity to implement the adaptation projects and subsequently implementation progress was now in most VDCs good. This makes overall LoCAL implementation satisfactory considering that the initial ‘delays’ were caused by the earthquake of 25 April, 2015.

LoCAL Annual Review Workshop in Chitwan district of Nepal on 19-20 April 2016 ©LOCAL-UNCDF

There were a total of 21 participants from Dhading and Rupandehi Districts. The participants included the VDC Secretaries, District Energy Officers, District Development Committee (DDC) officials, social mobilisers and staff members of the Government’s flagship governance programme: the Local Governance and Community Development Programme (LGCDP).

The participants in addition visited two different EFLGP project sites in Chitwan district, which enhanced their awareness on sustainable environment management and climate change adaptation activities -- as acknowledged by Mr. Min Prasad Bhattrai, VDC Secretary, Rupandehi District Gonaha, who stated that “Sharing of LoCAL implementation, field observation of Environment Friendly Development activities and theoretical perspective of climate change adaptation helped greatly in enhancing our knowledge and understanding on LoCAL implementation modality.”

Also, thorough discussions took place on possibilities to strengthen the LoCAL implementation for the ongoing and coming FYs and, as a result of the cross learnings from the different district experiences and through the site visits to the EFLGP, further lessons were drawn for improving the system design of LoCAL in the years to come.