Journal

Agro-biodiversity in Nepal: Wise insurance

Almost a decade ago, Surya Nath heard that researchers were in the area setting up a project to examine how farmers grew six crops: rice, finger millet, taro, sponge gourd, pigeon pea, and cucumber. He approached them with a notion of crossing domestic rice with a wild variety. With their advice he embarked on the task, but “my vision was a bit weak and my hand was shaky and I worried...

Participatory plant breeding on the hillside farms of Nepal

Researchers in Nepal are supporting the efforts of mountain farmers to regain control over their lives, with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Since 1998, a research team from Resources Himalaya, a Kathmandu-based non-governmental organization, has been working with 45 men and women farmers from three sites in Nepal's remote Sankhuwasava District to learn how...

Water management in Ecuador’s Andes mountains
In the countries of the Northern Andes, there is a unique ecosystem that starts at 5,000, at the edge of the glaciers that cap the mountains, and runs down to about 3,600 m. The landscape of these high, treeless, plateaus — known as the paramo — is dotted with plants and shrubs uniquely adapted to the cold night temperatures and high levels of ultraviolet light . But most unusual about the...
No longer lonely at the top
Since 1994, Chhetri and her sisters have run a trekking business in Pokhara. Chhetri, Nepal's first female trekking guide, is used to pioneering. She and her sisters started the first woman run restaurant in town. When that failed, they opened a lodge and expanded with the trekking service. Chhetri has trained over 70 Nepalese women to be guides. Miriam Torres lives in a distant corner of the...
No longer lonely at the top
Since 1994, Chhetri and her sisters have run a trekking business in Pokhara. Chhetri, Nepal's first female trekking guide, is used to pioneering. She and her sisters started the first woman run restaurant in town. When that failed, they opened a lodge and expanded with the trekking service. Chhetri has trained over 70 Nepalese women to be guides. Miriam Torres lives in a distant corner of the...
Reservoirs of hope: The development challenge - 'toting the water'

An IDRC-funded shared learning effort helps farmers deliver fresh water —and the prospect of a brighter future — to impoverished villages in China’s Guizhou province. In the early 1990s, Guizhou — one of China’s poorest provinces — implemented a government-run water management project, with many facilities being rebuilt or maintained by the state. There was...

Managing opium: Policy choices for Afghanistan
Income from illegal opium poppy cultivation helps sustain the livelihoods of millions of rural Afghans, but also provides significant revenues to criminals and armed groups fighting the government. Although at first glance Papaver somniferum — the “sleep-bringing poppy” — is a seemingly innocuous flowering plant, its seedpods can deliver opium as well as powerful narcotic derivatives like...
Earth Negotiations Bulletin (5:27), 3 March 1995

Tage Michaelson (FAO) stated that the main conclusion in the report E/CN.17/1995/5 was that "there is agreement that awareness needs to be generated at the governmental level on the specificity of mountain issues. Sustainable mountain development must start with a change of attitude towards and treatment of indigenous people and mountain women, including recognition of the right to land,...

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