Thematic Areas
Permaculture: NPG aims to disseminate the philosophy and principles of Permaculture working strategically through policy formulation, good governance, capacity building, quality control of training and design services, research, advocacy and lobby to the individuals and organizations. NPG has organized 62th Permacultue Design Course till date and therefore has more than 1000 Permaculture Graduates under its roaster. It has been promoting farm and village community design based on permaculture principles and has supported many such works and developed it as a learning resource center.
Food Sovereignty: Food Security (FS) states when everyone, every time, has physical and economical access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet the dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (World Summit 1996). It is about the production and distribution of food in a way that promote a healthy environment, community self-reliance and an equal sharing of food for every person and community. Food availability, food accessibility and food utilization are the dimensions of food security. Food Sovereignty is a right to determine our own food systems, viz. access to land, water, tools, seeds, markets and knowledge of how to work the land. Food Sovereignty is a basic framework for food security and overall management for every community. It determines a system for fair, diversity and sustainable livelihoods. Food and nutritional security for all through establishing appropriate system and mechanisms to ensure food and nutritional security and adopting different approaches and strategies will be the main areas of focus
Integrated Watershed Management: Integrated Watershed Management (IWM)is a concept of managing catchment area and or watershed through using comprehensive and integrated approach and strategies. Introducing concept of design and appropriate technologies will be the integral parts based on the needs and interest of people and geographical context. It is believed that integration of ecological agriculture, permaculture, landscape and watershed management model along with natural resource and biodiversity management would be the best ways to create an appropriate and enabling environment for the promotion of self-reliant society. The overall design of the watershed management on the basis environmental analysis and need assessment would be the foundation of creating system that could address the local level needs and also build system self-sustaining so as establish sustainable livelihoods at micro and macro level. NPG has expertise and long working experience on designing watershed as well permaculture village/community.
Organic Agriculture & Ecosystem Management: Organic Agriculture (OA) is an approach of establishing a system of producing agriculture organically. It is one of the potential options, which is now proved to be high productive especially in fragile, marginal and resource poor ecosystems. Ecosystem management (EM) is a process that aims to conserve major ecological services and restore natural resources while meeting the socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs of current and future generations. OA and EM is well recognizing worldwide farming systems, which provides safe and diverse kinds of food and, at the same time, is potential for building system productive and earning high income. Organic agriculture, hence, is one of best options for resource poor farmers to ensure the food security in Nepal, not only by producing more and diverse food in sustainable way but also by increasing farm income when market is available.
NPG, since its establishment, has been working on OA promotion with different stakeholders which vary from technical support to organic standard and policy formulation that also supported NPG to be a champion organisation at the national level. NPG will continue its work on OA in future and built strong linkage with government institutions at policy and implementation levels through strengthening institutional capacity on both management and technical aspects. NPG will expand its national and international level networks and field works on organic agriculture as per the local and national level needs.
Renewable Energy: A lack of access to modern energy services negatively affects nearly a third of humanity. Energy poverty is absolutely vital to effectively address the issues and ultimately improve lives in a long-term, sustainable manner; but it isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do. Energy is the one of the most important components in the permaculture. It has been considered as main source for efficient and productive system. Furthermore, energy especially renewable energy (RE) has been considered as important aspects not only for the rural livelihoods but also for overall national development. Energy will also be focused on both primary uses in system designed including its end use. NPG has very strong experience on how to fit it into system and get better results. So, NPG will provide technical support for the better use and improve access to energy.
Technological innovation as well as innovative delivery and financing models through design principles are making new and improved energy products and services more available and more affordable. Accelerating the development and uptake of such products and services must be the focus of our efforts to dramatically scale-up the quality and quantity of energy access available in the poorest parts of the country.
Climate Resilience and Adaptation: Like in many other countries, now-a-days, climate change has become a common topic in Nepalese society, too. In the context of growing population and fulfilling their diverse demands along with other human behaviour, greenhouse gas emission is the common phenomena and contributed for global warming including trigger for different disasters, which is the common issue in the current world. In the Earth Science a glacier, which is a huge body of ice moving down on a slope or valley, is taken as a good indicator of climate change. If the climate were to remain constant for a longer period, the size and shape of the glaciers would never change. A glacier sometimes changes size and shape due to climatic change. A glacier would advance further down and expand with the climate changing to a cool summer and heavy snowfall in winter and in the monsoon season. Nepalese glaciers are more vulnerable to climatic change than glaciers of other regions. Increase in air temperature is more on such glaciers since it reduces amount of snowfall (less snow but more rain) considerably during precipitation in summer monsoon.
Similarly, different other climate related parameters like temperature, monsoon, drought and many others will also have negative implication because of climate change. The changes in climatic parameters will have significant impact on various aspects of agricultural and other social system. There are number of such examples in the country.