International Centre for Integrated Mountain Dev. (ICIMOD), 2017-2022

Overall the Embassy found that ICIMOD has made a lot of progress during the period of the contribution. It needs to be acknowledged that the COVID pandemic generated many challenges and difficulties, but that it was positive that ICIMOD still managed to conduct so much work e.g. by shifting to virtual meetings and training. The Embassy finds it evident that ICIMOD is a leading institution, both regionally and globally, when it comes to mountain development. Examples of results include: * ICIMOD's Regional Program on Adaptation and Resilience Building worked closely with regional member country partners on different innovative interventions, including nature-based resilient mountain solutions, resilient entrepreneurship, and clean energy. This resulted in direct benefits to over 14,000 people (50% women) and reaching over 100,000 people in the Hindu Kush Himalaya through scaling efforts. ICIMOD also benefited over 4,000 people (50% women) directly and an estimated 100,000 people indirectly through their inclusive and gender-responsive springshed management practices in their regional member countries. * ICIMOD's Regional Program on Transboundary Landscapes worked to promote conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in e.g. in the transboundary areas of India, Bhutan and Nepal under their Kanchenjunga Landscape Conservation and Development Initiative. Sustainable tourism concepts and approaches have been adopted, and ICIMOD managed to leverage substantial project resources from national resources to replicate cooperative tourism in the Kangchenjunga area: Bhutan (USD 200,000), India (USD 200,000), and Nepal (USD 20,000) directly benefiting 14,637 people (women 40%). Similarly, the concept and practices of rural tourism were taken to scale by conceptualizing circuit tourism in the Hindu Kush Karakoram Pamir Landscape and through media promotion. A total of 107 homestays (70 in Bhutan, 18 in India, and 19 in Nepal) directly benefited from homestay pilots. Homestays are primarily managed by women as family-run businesses engaging young family members as employees. * ICIMOD's Regional Program on River Basins and Cryosphere successfully pilot tested flood early warning systems and innovative approaches for agriculture water, energy, hazards, and springshed water management. ICIMOD strategically facilitated the scaling up/out of their innovations, approaches, and practices. For instance, in Pakistan ICIMOD worked together with the Gilgit-Baltistan Disaster Management Authority and initially piloted their approach for Community Based Flood Early Warning Systems in selected sites vulnerable to floods in four districts. These early warning systems saved precious lives and livestock. The authority has further integrated ICIMOD's early warning approach into their Green Climate Fund (GCF) funded programme to scale-up of glacial lake outburst flood risk reduction in Northern Pakistan. This programme is installing 50 weather-monitoring stations and 408 river discharge gauges/sensors enabling targeted vulnerable communities to receive and respond to early warnings. Pakistan's National Disaster Risk Management Fund Pakistan and the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat have also replicated ICIMOD's early warning approaches. Similar work has also been done in India and Nepal, where flood early warning was provided to more than 7,900 homes in Nepal and 12,500 homes in India. In both countries, these systems helped saving precious lives and livestock. Local governments in Nepal have since set up a basket fund for further community based early warning systems, and Save the Children, Oxfam as well as the Bihar Water Resources Department are replicating ICIMOD systems using their own funds, increasing the outreach manifolds. * ICIMOD's Regional Program on Atmosphere managed to contribute to climate mitigation by minimizing emissions from brick kilns in Nepal and Pakistan. This was done e.g. by introducing and scaling up the so called "zig-zag technology" of brick production, and by using LPG and pellets as an alternative fuel to replace coal. As a result, approximately 50% of the brick kilns in Nepal and 95% in Punjab, Pakistan converted to zig-zag technology, and most of these brick kilns use LPG for initial firing. Further, brick kilns in Nepal have started pellet manufacturing and application as an alternative to coal. ICIMOD's efforts contributing to reduce approximately 1.6 million tons of CO2 annually in Nepal and Pakistan. * During MTAP IV, ICIMOD published 382 peer-reviewed publications, which is an average of 76 publications per year. ICIMOD advanced the generation and use of relevant data, knowledge, and analysis, including their 2019 landmark publication "the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment". This was the first comprehensive assessment comprising important scientific research on the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable mountain development. Utilizing the science generated over MTAP IV, many of ICIMOD's senior staff, including several SANDEE alumni, contributed to important global assessments done by e.g. the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, ensuring that HKH mountain perspectives, knowledge, and voices were included. This also contributed to global recognition of the importance of mountains to ensure improved, resilient livelihoods and ecosystems. * During the MTAP IV period, ICIMOD developed and implemented gender action plans across their regional programmes that facilitated targeted interventions empowering women and raising awareness about structural inequalities that often go unnoticed. Their gender action plans also helped them to strategically link gender integrated and gender-focused work with our regional programmes and initiatives, mainly focusing on increased participation and enhanced capacity of women. One such example is the way ICIMOD addressed challenges associated with the extremely low representation of women in the Earth Observation and Geographical Information Systems workforce in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region. They conducted a series of training programmes exclusively targeting young and emerging women professionals. Altogether, they developed a critical mass of 822 women professionals in remote sensing who are now delivering technical services at their respective organisations. * During MTAP IV, ICIMOD made significant investments in enhancing human and institutional capacity of their partner organisations in the regional member countries to support scaling up/out of their mountain development efforts in the HKH region. ICIMOD successfully maintained their long-term partner relations with key organisations in the regional member countries, working in close partnership in a very hands-on and demand-driven capacity development manner. They co-developed solutions with partners and built institutional capacities in different disciplines relevant to sustainable development in mountain areas. Over MTAP IV, ICIMOD organised 235 capacity-building events reaching 5,478 professionals (33% of whom were women) from the Hindu Kush Himalaya region. They also conducted extensive capacity strengthening trainings on partnering approaches internally for their own staff and externally for staff from partner institutions. A total of 982 professionals (29% of whom were women) attended these trainings. * During the period ICIMOD worked to create and further strengthen the interface between science-based evidence and policy and practice, through which they tried to influence policies and decision-making processes for improved livelihoods, reduced social and physical vulnerabilities, and improved ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region. Some of the policies influenced include; a frameworks to strengthen the entrepreneurship adopted by the Government of Nepal, the National Energy Policy in India, Ecotourism Policies in Bhutan, Nepal and India, Bhutans road map for organic agriculture, the new Forest Bill in Nepal, the revised Disaster Risk Management Plan in Gilgit-Baltistan (Pakistan), regulations on waste segregation at source and banned plastic bags in Kathmandu (Nepal), the Pakistani ban on construction of traditional brick kilns, etc. * ICIMOD's regional science-policy forums and knowledge exchange, data-sharing networks and platforms contribute significantly to bring together their regional member country partners for exchanging knowledge and experiences. This fosters transboundary collaboration on scientific issues and challenges of common interest pertaining to sustainable mountain development. One example includes the Two Punjabs-One Atmosphere-initiative that brought together researchers, practitioners and experts from diverse sectors and disciplines air quality monitoring, health, gender equality and social inclusion, livelihoods, knowledge management and communication, as well as those working on brick kilns, open burning and transport sectors, and regional pollution issues like smog and fog to share their knowledge and experience on air pollution in the Greater Punjab. As these actors from India and Pakistan rarely get to meet, this initiative brought a unique opportunity for cross-boarder contacts, interaction and learning. * During MTAP IV ICIMODs leadership changed hands from David Molden, with Pema Gyamtsho assuming the role of Director General in October 2020. This change, taking place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, did not allow for an in-person handing and taking over of responsibilities. Likewise, the tenure of the former Deputy Director General Eklabya Sharma ended in November 2022, with Izabella Koziell succeeding him in May 2021. The new leadership had to cope with the challenges posed by the pandemic while ensuring that the centre remained functional. The adoption of an online working modality enabled the centre to carry out most of its knowledge generation and capacity-building activities but significantly hampered its field activities. Despite these challenges the ICIMOD team managed to develop their new 2030 Strategy and their mid-term action plan IV (202326), in a consultative and participatory manner. The organisation also conducted a gender audit, adopted an Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy at the workplace, continued to work to ensure gender balance in their workforce e.g. by recruiting more women in senior positions.