Background

Nepal’s topographical and ecological diversity makes the country highly vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures have intensified floods, fires, landslides, and glacier melt, affecting livelihoods, ecosystems, and infrastructure. These risks are compounded by limited physical infrastructure and constrained fiscal and institutional capacity.

Nepal aims to strengthen climate resilience while pursuing ambitious targets, including net-zero emissions by 2045. Its NDC 3.0 adopts an integrated approach to adaptation across sectors such as agriculture, forestry, water resources, and energy. Achieving these goals will require closing a projected financing gap of over USD 73 billion by 2035, including USD 28 billion for adaptation.

Financing gaps are most acute for vulnerable groups, particularly women. In Nepal, where livelihoods depend heavily on agriculture and natural resources, women play a critical role as ecosystem stewards and resilience enablers. Women-led and women-engaging enterprises (WLEs) support local livelihoods and community resilience, often through agriculture- and forestry-based activities. While government policies—such as free business registration, subsidized loans, and entrepreneurship support—have improved the enabling environment, access to formal finance remains limited. Up to 52 percent of women-owned small businesses face challenges in accessing finance, and only 13 percent of women have borrowed from formal financial institutions.

Objective

Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), together with ForestAction Nepal (FA-N) and Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS), conducted a primary study to assess the socio-economic and financial challenges faced by WLEs in Nepal, with a focus on access to finance.

This event will present key findings from the study and bring together stakeholders from across the ecosystem, including WLE associations, industry bodies, banks, microfinance institutions, and savings and credit cooperatives. Discussions will focus on identifying policy, market, and financing gaps and exploring pathways to improve WLEs’ access to capital and their capacity to effectively absorb and deploy finance for climate adaptation and resilience.