This article examines how climate change discourses are generated and negotiated in two parallel meso-level planning processes for annual development programmes in Nepal. This enquiry adopts a comparative analysis of district government planning and regional forestry planning around climate change issues, defined by two concepts: heterogeneous actors and interrelationship among these actors and various sectors. The findings suggest that climate change has drawn the attention of both the planning processes. However, both the processes lack the ‘communications–collaboration’ approach to planning and are overly-dominated by the top–down process. Consequently, they fail to address the practical problems and voices of the communities vulnerable to climate change. The paper argues that the persistence of feudal culture in political leadership, pre-conceived priorities of aid agencies, unscrupulous development administration and limitations of civil society are responsible of the failure of either planning to address the problems.