Sometimes the unintended consequences of certain decisions prove more significant than their intended goals, as is happening with the merger of federal ministries. In a bid to reduce the state’s financial burden and improve administrative efficiency, the Government of Nepal has undertaken a significant administrative restructuring by merging several ministries. This includes the integration of the Ministry of Agriculture Development (MoAD) and the Ministry of Forests and Environment (MoFE) into the new Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Environment (MoAFE).

The late Minister Shailaja Acharya first proposed merging agricultural and forestry institutions in the early 1990s. The rationale then was rooted in a practical reality: At the farmers’ level, the boundary between agriculture and forests often blurs, making integrated management of farms and forests essential for sustainable development. Despite this recognition, institutional and administrative rigidities prevented the merger for decades. That proposal has finally been realised at a time when climate change has become a serious threat to our agriculture.

While fiscal savings and broader administrative efficiency primarily drove the current restructuring, the creation of the MoAFE also stands as a welcome development from a climate change perspective. It establishes a strong institutional foundation for an integrated approach increasingly recognised globally—placing the agro-food system at the centre of both climate action and sustainable development. Building on the former MoFE’s strong legacy in climate leadership, the new ministry now has a valuable opportunity to drive this agenda forward.

Climate connection

The erstwhile MoFE served as the primary nodal ministry for climate change, leading the development of key national climate policies and frameworks, coordinating with other ministries and facilitating the integration of climate change considerations into sectoral plans at both the federal and subnational levels. Notably, it coordinated the formulation of Nepal’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which outlines priority adaptation programmes across climate-vulnerable sectors, including agriculture. The formation of the new MoAFE now places these coordination responsibilities under a single ministry that directly oversees agriculture, creating a stronger platform for mainstreaming climate responses within the agro-food system.

Agriculture and food security feature prominently in the NAP, with flagship programmes focused on enhancing agricultural productivity through climate-resilient water management systems. This is particularly critical in Nepal, where droughts have chronically affected farming for decades. Drying local water sources, depleting soil moisture and shrinking aquifers have severely affected farming. Recurrent droughts, especially during the planting season and sometimes mid-crop cycle, combined with floods, soil erosion and landslides, have left farmers struggling to cope with increasingly unreliable weather patterns.

The collapse of winter rainfall across much of the country is no longer a temporary anomaly but a sign of a fundamental and possibly irreversible shift in climate patterns. The consequences for the food system are already stark: Farmers are being pushed towards bankruptcy, local food shortages are emerging and the national food import bill is rising sharply.

In this context, merging agriculture and forestry into the new MoAFE becomes even more compelling. By placing both sectors under unified political and administrative leadership, the new ministry is better positioned to understand their interlinked vulnerabilities, eliminate coordination barriers and promote genuinely integrated management of farms and forests. However, like any newly formed institution, the MoAFE will need to overcome several operational and institutional challenges to fully realise its potential.

The challenges

One of the most immediate challenges facing the new MoAFE is the development of a shared mission and vision—a task complicated by the fact that professionals from the two erstwhile ministries come from distinctly different disciplines, each with its own approaches, priorities and a tendency to assert the primacy of its own sector. An added layer of complexity is the management of water resources, a critical element for both agriculture and forestry, yet one that neither ministry has historically managed with sufficient depth beyond basic utilisation.

While it has long been claimed that maintaining good forest cover helps conserve water sources, this assertion has rarely been subjected to rigorous scrutiny. Institutions responsible for forest protection were not required to demonstrate measurable improvements in water availability or spring recharge. As a result, despite having more than 46 percent of its land under forest cover, Nepal continues to lose mountain springs. Hence, the challenge for the new institution will be to gently unlearn and relearn with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the forest-water relationship.

Climate change has too often been narrowly framed as a problem of floods and landslides. This limited perspective helps explain why, despite numerous policy declarations, the country still lacks effective agricultural programmes for farmers to adopt at scale to counter growing climate threats. There is growing recognition that many long-relied-upon solutions, such as rainwater harvesting, are inadequate to address the scale and nature of the emerging challenges. So far, the steps taken have not made food and water systems truly resilient.

Even robust evidence of climate impacts on agriculture, generated by the government’s own scientifically rigorous studies, such as the National Climate Change Survey (NCCS), often fails to translate into decisive action. The NAP rightly stresses mainstreaming climate change into sectoral plans and budgets to ensure more transparent, efficient and cost-effective actions. Yet, while effective mainstreaming would improve risk tracking, accountability and impact assessment, it remains a formidable challenge that the new ministry must overcome.

Renewed hope

Recent weeks have provided sobering reminders of what lies ahead. Europe experienced record-shattering heatwaves, while China and India suffered catastrophic flooding, deadly landslides and widespread urban inundation. Given rising global temperatures, similar extremes are increasingly likely in Nepal. The critical question is whether, at the current pace of efforts and level of understanding, the country can realistically tackle these threats and safeguard its agriculture and food security.

With limited resources and fragile ecosystems, Nepalis are exceptionally vulnerable to environmental shocks that have historically forced us to adapt to the adversities. A prime example is the traditional practice in narrow mountain valleys of reclaiming flood-damaged farmland by strategically diverting silt-laden floodwater onto affected fields. For generations, communities have used this method to sustain food security despite operating in highly constrained and risk-prone landscapes with very limited arable land. These traditional techniques helped make scarce farmlands and, by extension, local food security, more resilient to floods.

While such traditional measures are no longer sufficient on their own to counter emerging threats, they offer a valuable foundation upon which more effective, climate-resilient solutions can be built. We still need to develop more effective ways to protect our food and water systems from the growing vagaries of nature. In this context, the merger of the agriculture and forestry ministries, though primarily driven by fiscal calculus and administrative goals, has renewed hope that a more integrated and effective approach to building climate-resilient agriculture may finally emerge.