The Small Earth Nepal (SEN) and the Consortium for Capacity Building (CCB) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA organized a ‘Graduates’ Workshop on Green Economy’ on Sunday 28 July 2013 at Summit Hotel, Kathmandu. The workshop was financially supported by Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) and technically supported by the Central Department of Environment Science (CDES), Tribhuvan University and the Agriculture and Forest University (AFU).
The workshop was organized with the view of providing a platform to early career researchers to share their research outcomes under the theme of green economy and to expose their work to the academicians and colleagues working under similar issues. The other purpose of the workshop was to discuss upon the challenges and opportunities in initiation of green economy in Nepal.
The formal opening session was chaired by Professor Mr. Suresh Raj Chalise, Advisor, The Small Earth Nepal and Mr. Gokarna Mani Duwadee, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (MoSTE) and National Focal Person of APN, was the Chief Guest. The workshop started with the welcome remarks by Mr. Sudarshan Rajbhandari, Vice President, SEN. Mr. Jeeban Panthi and Mr. Piyush Dahal from SEN shared the background on capacity building of youth in green economy and existing programs within SEN respectively. Mr. Gregory Pierce, Senior Associate Scientist at CCB, in his keynote speech shared about the current status of green economy among the backwarders. Mr. Duwadee shared the brief activities of the ministry in green activities and congratulated for initiating the discussion for such a new topic ‘Green Economy’. The workshop consisted of four different sessions with six paper presentations followed by a panel discussion. The papers were selected from different aspects of green economy like-agriculture, climate adaptation, eco-tourism, energy conservation, livestock management, etc. Four panelists from different background shared and discussed their ideas and experiences in green economy in the panel discussion which was moderated by Dr. Soni M. Pradhanang, City University of New York, USA. Each session observed a comprehensive discussions under the theme of green economy with respect to the presentations.
The closing session was chaired by Dr. Kedar Lal Shrestha, President, IDI Nepal and APN Project leader. Dr. Shrestha handed over the certificates of appreciation to all the presenters in the workshop. After the quick review of the entire workshop by Dr. Pradhanang, the session was brought to an end with the closing remarks by Dr. Shrestha.
