There are two lines of defense to address the pressing issue of climate change: mitigation (reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and enhancing sequestration) and adaptation (reducing vulnerabilities and increasing resilience). Although there are fundamental differences between these two strategies across spatial, temporal, institutional and administrative scales, they can interact with each other, resulting in synergies or tradeoffs. An integrated approach in which the interactions of adaptation and mitigations strategies is considered important to harness the benefits of the synergies to create win- win situations and avoid conflicts for no- regret decisions. The main aim of this study is to assess the extent and mechanisms of such interactions which exist among the climate change related policies of Nepal, and the opportunities and barriers present to harness the synergies and reduce the conflicts. This study presents a quantitative analysis of the existing national level climate policies of Nepal (in Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use, Energy, Urban Systems and Water sectors) for identification of the extent and mechanism of the interactions between them by using a scoring system. Analytical Hierarchical Framework (AHP) has been used to rank and prioritize the opportunities and barriers to harness the synergies and avoid the conflicts. Although all 4 sectors displayed the potential for interactions, with AFOLU sector showing the highest potential for both synergies and conflicts, these interactions have not been considered in policy formulation yet. An institution dedicated to climate change was identified as the most important opportunity, while the lack of adequate institutional co- ordination was identified as the most important barrier in the context of Nepal.
