The Problem: Livestock systems in Nepal are highly vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather, posing a significant threat to national food security. Currently, over 35 percent of livestock-dependent households are experiencing severe climate-induced hazards, including heat stress, declining water resources, and reduced availability of fodder and forage. These findings highlight a critical gap: the urgent need for scientific, evidence-based decision-support tools tailored to livestock systems that can characterize climate risks and inform effective adaptation planning and policy development. 

The Solution: To address this vulnerability, the Nepal Agricultural Research Council, in collaboration with the Borlaug Institute for South Asia and the Gates Foundation, developed Nepal’s first Climate Adaptation Atlas, known as “AANA.” This institutional and technological innovation provides spatially disaggregated information on climate hazards, exposure, and vulnerability across Nepal’s diverse topography and socioeconomic contexts. The AANA Atlas supports evidence-based decision-making, enabling more precise priority setting and targeted investments to strengthen the climate resilience of smallholder farming communities. 

Results and Impact Achieved: The Atlas indicates that by 2080, under high-emission scenarios, climate hazards such as increasing heat–humidity, extreme cold, and flooding will intensify, with goats and poultry among the most affected species. Importantly, the analysis shows that the primary risk to over one million farming households lies not only in the hazards themselves but also in the current low level of investment in adaptation capacity. By using the Atlas to guide the implementation of existing adaptation measures—such as improved shelter design, micronutrient supplementation, and mechanical cooling for poultry—livestock production risks can be reduced by more than 50%. 

Scalability and Regional Relevance: The AANA Atlas is a collaborative effort involving multiple South Asian research institutions and is integrated into a broader regional framework through the ACASA platform. By providing a robust foundation for evidence-based planning, the model is highly scalable to other regions facing similar climate challenges. The adaptation options and data-driven insights generated by the Atlas are applicable across multiple levels, from local community planning to national policy formulation and large-scale programme development.