Four ‘climate smart villages’ in Kavre district—Nayagaun-Deopur, Patalekhet, Kalchebesi and Naubise-Dhaitar—are running for the Best Climate Practices Award that carries a purse of 10,000 Euros.

As a part of the annual challenge invited by Best Climate Practices Observatory, a project of International Centre for Climate Governance, the cluster of four climate villages is one of the 45 pilot projects competing from across the globe. The local communities of these villages are being trained to improve resilience to climate change and foster sustainable development, particularly agriculture.

The entry to the contest was submitted by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, which is working on a climate smart village pilot project through its Himalayan Climate Change Adaptation Programme (HICAP), educating small-holder farmers about climate-smart agricultural practices. The pilot project is working with 508 households in 18 farmers’ groups.

A range of projects have been submitted for the Best Climate Practices challenge 2015 that focuses on ‘Climate Change and Water Availability for Food Production’.

The Best Climate Practices Contest of 2015 aims to showcase innovative solutions to improve efficient water management and water-smart food production, and to help the winner/s in scaling up existing projects or implementing ground-breaking ideas, according to the Best Climate Practices website.

The winning practice will be determined by a combination of both online voting results and the assessment by an international Expert Panel. For voting, the public online polls are open from September 1 to September 15, 2015.