THE SMALL EARTH NEPAL

‘Building Climate Resilience Farming Systems in Sloping Lands of South Asia’ is a project funded by Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN). It is a collaborative research project including teams from Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. The meeting held on 10^th and 11^th November, 2017 was attended by project partners from Sri Lanka and Nepal.  The main objective of the meeting was to update the project partners regarding the work done so far and to discuss the plan ahead. Among the attendees from Sri Lanka was the principle investigator of the project, Prof. Buddhi Marambe, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Mr. Sarath Premalal, Director General, Department of Meteorology and Dr. Ranjith Punyawardena, Principal Scientist, Department of Agriculture, Prof. Lasantha Manawadu, Prof. Gamini Pushpakumara and Prof. Pradeepa Silva from University of Peradeniya. The representatives of Nepal project counterparts were Prof. Khem Raj Dahal from Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences (IAAS) who is also affiliated with The Small Earth Nepal (SEN), Mr. Dhiraj Pradhananga, President of SEN and affiliated with Tribhuwan University, Mr. Niranjan Bista, Senior Program Officer from SEN and Ms. Arsheena Piya from SEN. The meeting was held in Hotel Pension Vasana in Dillibazar with total of 10 participants from Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Prof. Dahal gave a brief welcome note to all the participants followed by Dr. Buddhi Marambe who gave a brief review of the agenda of the meeting. He introduced briefly about the background of the project giving the participants an idea about the expected outcome of the meeting. He gave a brief background of the objectives of the ongoing project and expectation to collaboratively publish after the completion of the project. Prof. Dahal spoke about Nepal’s research site, Patlekhet and vicinity which lies in the mid hill region of Nepal. He gave a detailed outlook of the study conducted in Nepal and highlighted the achievements so far which included the completion of survey and data entry, preparation of Crop Calendar. He also talked about the constraints faced while doing the study and some aspects of the project which are needed to be worked on.

Similarly, Mr. Premalal gave a brief introduction of the climatology in Sri Lanka and the sites that the project research is being done in. He talked about the increasing variability of climate and comparison of observe and model climatology. The feedbacks were given by the PI after each presentation giving the presenters suggestions on how the information provided can be made better. Mr. Lasantha presented on the Survey data analysis and site mapping based on vulnerability indices. He presented the data analysis based of survey, questionnaires, mapping and the indices after which the review of the data entry was done by all the participants. The corrections in the data entry were made where necessary.

After the completion of data review Dr. Buddhi gave his final remarks on the upcoming work to be done by both Sri Lanka and Nepal project members and suggested exchanging of analytical report through which value can be added by both the countries on the work done by each other. The final meeting for the teams was decided to be held in Sri Lanka by the end of December. A thank you note was given by Prof. Gamini Pushpakumara, Dean of Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya.