completed · Food Security· Health

Responding to the food security consequences of Covid-19 in North Gorkha

The mountain communities of Nepal and across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region face specific challenges due to the remoteness from road networks, accelerated climate change, food scarcity and malnutrition, poor sanitation and health, low levels of literacy, with little opportunity to generate incomes and develop livelihoods beyond subsistence farming. These challenges are likely to be exacerbated with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in Nepal, with assessments by our Trustees in Nepal suggesting that mountain communities based on subsistence farming are likely to experience food shortages, interrupted access to seeds and agricultural inputs and the danger of famine and malnutrition. This project builds on a post-earthquake livelihoods programme in North Gorkha (2016-2021), which piloted micro-agricultural development, by modeling kitchen gardens in Tsum Nubri and the provision of monthly agricultural development training workshops to mothers’ groups in North Gorkha.