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NEPCAT solutions through fact sheets

Natural Resource Management – approaches and technologies in Nepal 

Most of the communities in Nepal are highly dependent on natural resources and have a rich experience of natural resources management, including sustainable land management (SLM). Land users and SLM experts and technicians spend most of their time on the land and develop considerable knowledge of land management, water management, watershed management, soil fertility improvement, and protection of soil resources in the course of their daily activities. However, most of this valuable knowledge is not documented or shared, and the knowledge remains a local and individual resource. The NEPCAT (Nepal Conservation Approaches and Technologies) fact sheets are being published to help document this knowledge and fill knowledge gaps on SLM. A loose and open network has been established to tap the experience of land users, technicians, and SLM experts from all over the country. The main aim of the NEPCAT network is to compile case studies on sustainable land management (SLM) and soil and water conservation (SWC), to feed them into the global World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) database, and to make them easily available to users across the country and in the wider Himalayan region in the form of factsheets. The ultimate aim is to offer a complete basket of options with technologies and approaches covering the wide range of geographic areas, land forms, and agro-ecological zones in Nepal to land users, managers, and decision makers so that they can choose appropriate technological packages and practices to address issues of soil erosion, land degradation, water scarcity, poor soil fertility, food security, and environmental and climate change.

An active collaboration: WOCAT, HIMCAT, and NEPCAT

The World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) is a global network of soil and water conservation (SWC) specialists that facilitates the sharing of knowledge on soil and water management and the efficient use of existing know-how. The Himalayan Conservation Approaches and Technologies (HIMCAT) network is an offspring of the global WOCAT initiative – a virtual platform set up to enable its members and other SWC specialists from across Asia to share their information and knowledge on soil and water management. Nepal Conservation Approaches and Technologies (NEPCAT) was set up under HIMCAT in 2006 specifically as a platform for sharing experiences from Nepal on soil and water management and natural resource management in general. Contributors’ experiences are documented using the WOCAT tool, a format for recording information in a consistent and comparable manner for easy reference and understanding.

Access the solutions

There are two different types of fact sheet or solutions, one describing a technology, the other an approach. WOCAT defines soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies as “agronomic, vegetative, structural, and or management measures that prevent and control land degradation and enhance productivity in the field”, and approaches as "the ways and means of support that help introduce, implement, adapt, and apply SWC technologies on the ground". A number of the fact sheets describe a technical intervention in conjunction with a specific approach.
Approaches
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Technologies
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The NEPCAT network published a first set of fact sheets on SLM technologies and approaches in 2008 in the WOCAT format and inspired by WOCAT’s ‘where the land is greener’ overview book. The fact sheets were printed to facilitate sharing with a wider audience, as well as being made available online. They were designed to support the efforts of rural development, and to provide ideas for decision makers, development workers, and land users. The fact sheets were welcomed by many programmes and departments in Nepal and the wider Hindu Kush Himalayan region. Now a second set of sheets has been prepared in 2013 with more new and promising technological packages and SLM good practices that have been successfully implemented in Nepal and are suitable for replication and scaling up. In line with the increasing use of the Internet, these are all now being published online in a form suitable for printing out by the user.

NEPCAT fact sheets can also be accessible by subject areas from this link.

Partners

The fact sheets are the product of a collaborative effort among organizations and institutions working in the field of land management.

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