The objective of the Northern Uplands – Promoting Climate Resilience (NU-PCR) project is to support vulnerable households in remote areas in three districts in Phongsaly to better understand the current trends and changes in climate and adapt their agricultural livelihoods to these changes. The project is funded by the European Union and was jointly and successfully implemented by CARE, CCL and SAEDA, in close collaboration with local communities (in Mai, Samphan and Gnot Ou districts of the Phongsaly province), the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Lao Women’s Union (among others).
The current report summarises the achievements accomplished during the four years of its implementation (2014-2018).
The greatest achievements (see resilience graphic on page 15) refer to improvement on women’s agency (not least through the establishment of VSLAs), farmers’ long term planning, division of labour through gender equitable shared workload, access to agro-climate information services and livelihood recovery rate. Interestingly, the project could not influence livelihood diversification. This is rooted in the fact, that livelihood of remote ethnic communities in the Northern Uplands of Lao PDR is already highly diversified. Further diversification may rather result economically risky (too much time and resources to be invested dispersive in large variety of farming options, at the cost of investment in value addition of existing livelihood priorities). Therefore, the support provided rather focused on the expansion and value addition to already existing practices (e.g. cultivation, processing and marketing of Cardamom, Tea, Honey, Galangal, Mushroom, Rice, Fish, etc.). (54 pages)