Agriculture contributes one-third of the national GDP in Nepal (CBS, 2016), 23% in Pakistan (Plecher, 2019), and 17% in Bhutan (NSB, 2018). It employs 65%, 60%, and 44% of the population in Nepal (CBS, 2016), Bhutan, and Pakistan (FAO, 2019), respectively. Agriculture is immensely affected by climate change (CC) in these countries. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has been identified as a sustainable solution to CC challenges in agriculture; however current efforts in CSA limit to conventional planning, extension, and dissemination approaches. The effective adoption of CSA requires smart, informed decisions for which the application of geospatial and other information technologies is crucial. Changing land use, water resources, soil fertility, and increasing climate extremes pose a serious threat for sustainable agriculture of the rapidly populating and climatically changing south Asian region (Gupta & Deshpande, 2004; Christen et al., 2010). Notwithstanding, the present apparent symptoms of CC causing non-availability of water at the right time, the existing traditional practices, skills, and drought/flood risks mitigation practices on watersheds are not sufficient (Ahmad et al., 2004; Prabhakar & Shaw, 2008) to cope with the emerging issues and risks. Consequently, a significant impact of CC on livelihood has been reported in South Asia (Ashraf et al., 2011; Nelson et al., 2009; Rafiq & Blaschke, 2012). It is partly because concise future 2 climate vulnerability and risks are not known. Geospatial technologies comprise a range of modern tools contributing to the geographic mapping and analysis of the earth and human societies (Albert, 2012). These technologies can be an important tool for agriculture planning and management (Rao et al., 2004; Sherrouse et al., 2011) and addressing CC issues (Sunderesan et al., 2013). Therefore, skilled human resources and improved knowledge on the application of geospatial technologies in climate-smart agriculture planning and management are urgently needed for sustaining food production, improving livelihood, and augmenting the economy. Therefore, this training workshop has been planned, under the framework of the APN Project (CBA2020-13MY-Thakuri), for the capacity building of the stakeholders on the application of geospatial technologies in CSA planning and management in Nepal.
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