10 Years in Nepal: What the Hariyo Ban Program Taught Us about Integrating Community Resilience

For 10 years, USAID’s Hariyo Ban Program has worked to build ecosystem and community resilience in Nepal. Over the course of the project, the country’s political system underwent significant changes and the country faced the devastation of a major earthquake and COVID-19. Despite these challenges, through close collaboration with partners at all levels—from communities to the central government—the project successfully conserved biodiversity, facilitated climate change adaptation, and improved the lives of forest-dependent people. As the conservation community tries to stem the tide on devastating rates of biodiversity loss and the development community works to address climate change, mounting inequities, and a health and economic crisis around the world, the Hariyo Ban Program provides important lessons for building resilience through participatory and inclusive natural resource management, working across multiple scales of decision-making, and scaling up successful approaches and ensuring their sustainability.