CASE STUDY 17
Activating Female Frontline Leaders for Local Adaptation Planning
Nepal
Context
Nepal is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, facing recurring floods, landslides, droughts, and extreme weather events. These hazards disproportionately affect women and adolescent girls, particularly regarding access to SRHR services during crises. Traditional climate and disaster responses have often overlooked reproductive health needs. Ipas Nepal recognized this gap and began embedding SRHR into Nepal’s Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPAs) and the broader climate resilience agenda.
Organization
Ipas Nepal is a country program of Ipas Global, which has over 50 years of global work in abortion rights and 23 years in Nepal. They work to ensure access to safe abortion and contraception, while promoting gender equity and reproductive justice. Around 2020, Ipas globally recognized the urgent links between climate change and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), leading to the launch of new country-level climate resilience initiatives.
Ipas Nepal became one of the pioneers in integrating SRHR into climate adaptation frameworks, creating tools and programs that align reproductive health with disaster preparedness, resilience, and climate policy.
Approach
Ipas Nepal’s strategy combines grassroots leadership with systemic policy change. Through its “natural leader” model, the organization trains women and adolescent girls in disaster-prone areas to advocate for their reproductive health needs and to work with municipal governments on Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPAs). This ensures that services such as contraception, safe abortion, menstrual health, and gender-based violence response are recognized as essential during crises.
To strengthen health systems, Ipas Nepal developed a climate-resilient SRHR framework, merging its global safe abortion ecosystem model with the WHO’s low-carbon climate-resilient framework. This tool allows the organization to measure resilience in health facilities and local governments, while also building evidence for broader investment.
At the same time, Ipas Nepal has pushed for policy reforms, successfully advocating for SRHR’s inclusion in Nepal’s second Health National Adaptation Plan {HNAP} and the country’s position paper for COP29.
Results to Date
Because of Ipas Nepal’s advocacy work, 3 provinces, 17 municipal governments, and 18 Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPAs) now include sexual and reproductive health in their disaster response and resilience planning, ensuring that services such as contraception, safe abortion, and menstrual health are prioritized during climate crises.
Ipas Nepal has piloted new measurement tools—including a climate-resilient health facility scoring system that allows health providers and facilities to assess their preparedness and make targeted improvements, ensuring that SRHR services remain available and accessible during climate shocks. They have established a baseline value for climate resilience in health systems across 14 municipalities, so far.
Ipas Nepal has successfully influenced national and global platforms. Their advocacy contributed to the inclusion of SRHR in Nepal’s second Health National Adaptation Plan (HNAP), and more recently, in the country’s official position paper for COP29 under the gender theme.
“Climate change is now embedded into all our programming—it is not a separate stream but an intrinsic part of SRHR work. Funders are still catching up; many want more evidence before investing. But this newness is also an opportunity for us to lead and shape the field.”
KHUSBU POUDEL
Program Specialist, Ipas Nepal
PDF Innovative Approaches to Addressing Climate Change Impacts on Sexual & Reproductive Health: Case Studies from Around the World