The state and availability of biodiversity and other natural resources, both within agricultural systems and at landscape scale, underpin the provision of a range of goods and services from these ecosystems. The choices made today in using genetic, and, water and mineral resources will have enormous consequences for the future sustainability of earth's ecosystems and the services they provide. Ecosystem services are "the benefits people obtain from ecosystems". These services include provisioning services, such as food and water; regulating services, such as regulation of floods, drought, land degradation, and disease; supporting services, such as soil formation and nutrient cycling; and cultural services, such as goods for social ceremonies and functions. In recent years the unbalanced use of biodiversity and natural resources has resulted in increasingly deteriorating ecosystem health and services. The goal of the progamme is to improve the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable communities through better management of ecosystem health and services.

The focus areas of the programme are as follows:

• Diversity to manage adversity – climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies; adaptation of genotypes and breeds to multiple stresses, from drought to new pest and diseases, low input agriculture, integrated and diversified farming systems
• Community-based wetland and watershed management
• Biodiversity conservation through environmental education
• Organic farming and integrated soil and nutrient management
• Policy and social research on the contributions of biodiversity to ecosystem services, and to understand the causal linkages between climate change and the resulting impacts on environment, biodiversity, food production and livelihoods of resource poor farmers

Ongoing Projects :

• Promoting Innovative Policy and Development Options for Improving Shifting Cultivation in the Eastern Himalayas
• Strengthening Climate-Network in Nepal
• Land use Transition and Human Health in the Eastern Himalayas: An Adaptive Ecosystem Approach

View list of completed projects