Partnership with Indigenous Peoples
Nepal has a rich diversity of Indigenous Peoples and the Government of Nepal has recognized 59 indigenous groups, also known as Adivasi Janajati1, that comprise 35.8 percent of the population. USAID strives to improve the measurable impact and sustainability of its programs by ensuring that our staff and implementing partners engage Indigenous Peoples as meaningful counterparts in the development processes. This engagement establishes a path to safeguarding their interests against harm, enhancing self-promotion of their rights, determining their own priorities, and advancing their self-reliance.
USAID is integrating gender equality and social inclusion considerations throughout our programs by using participatory tools to engage and partner with indigenous communities. Utilizing these tools, USAID/Nepal is aligning our development goals with the priorities of Indigenous Peoples’ communities. Community-based ecotourism is one example of ongoing initiatives with Indigenous Peoples to enhance their socio-economic capacities.
USAID has also strived to increase Indigenous Peoples’ participation in supporting better water resource management to improve the resilience of targeted communities and conserve freshwater biodiversity. This is providing Indigenous Peoples the platform to showcase how their unique traditional knowledge can support aquatic biodiversity conservation.
Learn more about USAID/Nepal and USAID’s Policy on Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (PRO-IP).
Indigenous Voices and Program Highlights
Nestled in one corner of Chitwan’s Madi Valley, is the Ayodhyapuri Buffer Zone Community Homestay run by one of the largest groups of Indigenous Peoples; the Magar community. In close proximity to the Chitwan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with rich floral and faunal diversity, the Ayodhyapuri Buffer Zone has one of the greatest human-wildlife conflicts in the country, often resulting in wildlife-caused damage to agricultural produce, injuries to villagers, and a constant fear of being attacked after dark. Communities in the area perceived wildlife as a threat to their life and livelihoods. The Magar community members are also heavily dependent on forest resources, which was often the cause of additional conflict between the Magar community and national park guards. That is, until the Hariyo Ban Program saw an opportunity.
Envisioning it as a chance to change the attitude of the local community towards biodiversity, the Hariyo Ban Program supported the Ayodhyapuri Village in promoting homestays, private homes offering accommodation to paying guests, as an alternative livelihood for Magar families in the community. The program provided registration, institutional support, training, and exposure visits. These guests not only provide additional income but also the opportunity to showcase and revive the community's Magar culture.
Learn more about WWF and Hariyo Ban II, and the Ayodhyapuri Buffer Zone Community Homestay.
Seema Gharti, from the indigenous Magar community, is a champion for the aquatic life and habitats on which her livelihood depends. She lives in the scenic Airawati Village of Jhimruk Watershed in mid-western Nepal, where water levels are decreasing and fish quantity and diversity is dwindling.
With support from USAID’s Paani Water Project, Seema and her neighbors formed the Rakasa Raha Community Aquatic Animal Conservation Group (CAACG) in the small village of Rakasa, home to many indigenous Magar and Gurung people. Seema serves as secretary of the group, which regularly patrols the river for destructive fishing practices and other aquatic threats. They work closely with their local government, which provides support to her CAACG by endorsing their activities and allocating local funds towards biodiversity conservation.
Seema’s community is already seeing improvements. Destructive fishing practices decreased. People are more informed about the need to protect local biodiversity. Local fishers formed a cooperative to improve their linkage to markets and ensure their sustainable livelihoods. Paani helped this community draft its own Aquatic Animals and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which was enacted in July 2019 and provides the legal framework Seema’s group needed to enforce aquatic resource protection.
Learn more about the Paani Program and DAI Global.
See videos about Seema’s work and Pateshowori’s conservation efforts.
Dhansari Raji and her family have always had a close but tenuous relationship with the rivers in Western Nepal. In 2015, Bheri River monsoon floods swept away her parent’s home, leaving her father and five siblings without a place to live and limited economic opportunities. As the Rajis traditionally depend on fishing and boating for food and income, Dhansari had to drop out of school to help her family earn money. She also took on sporadic jobs as a daily wage laborer to make ends meet. In 2019, USAID’s Paani (Water) Program conducted a nature-based tourism assessment in Karnali to explore alternative livelihoods for disadvantaged groups. The goal was to find new opportunities that could integrate into the river co-management models Paani had helped establish. One of the findings was a shortage of skilled river guides in the Karnali. To address this, Paani arranged a 14-day basic river guide training for 20 youths from the community, including four Raji women, through a private company, the Karnal Rafting & Adventure Pvt. Ltd.
Dhansari says, “I participated in this training to learn skills and explore job opportunities from rafting in the Karnali River.” She is demonstrating to the community and beyond that a young woman from a marginalized group can succeed in the male-dominated world of adventure sport guiding if given the skills and knowledge to do so. Now an empowered and skilled assistant river guide, she is leading others to face the world-class rapids of Nepal’s Karnali River.
Learn more about the Paani Program and DAI Global.
1Indigenous Peoples are known by different names in different places. The terms “hill people,” “aboriginal,” “First Nations,” “scheduled tribes,” “natives,” “ethnic minorities,” “agro-pastoralists,” “pastoralists,” etc. all describe Indigenous Peoples. To accommodate this diversity, USAID endeavors to align our terminology to the self-determined identities of the communities. For more information, please review USAID’s Policy on Promoting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.