Climate change is serious threat that has been growing vigorously in present and in near future.  Many communities of Nepal rely on mostly on mixed farming system, agriculture and livestock. Livestock is an integral part of underdeveloped country like Nepal which affects socio-economic factor of our country. Moreover, commercialized livestock production has also been enhanced to meet the needs of people. Climate change has come as hazard for Nepalese farmer and entrepreneurs as climate change has its effect on health, metabolism, reproduction, nutrition of the livestock resulting in poor performance, inferior product quality, outbreak of novel diseases. The minimum increase in temperature causes major effect on livestock production decreasing their productivity. One of the major impacts is the thermal stress. It also deals with the direct and indirect emission of GHGs from livestock.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) acknowledges climate change as one of the factors affecting rural poverty and as one of the challenges it needs to address. Warming of the global climate has multifaceted effects in many natural, economic and socio-economic systems including of ecosystem, agriculture, health, soil, water resources etc. across the world and these effects will most probably be continued for centuries in future. Moreover, Climate change has its entire effect on environment, on animals climate change has complicated impact affecting distribution, growth, incidence of diseases, and availability of prey, productivity and even extinction of species in extreme cases due to habitat loss. Moreover, livestock are the source of 33% of the protein in human diets and continued population and economic growth could double the total demand for livestock products by 2050 as suggested by Alexandratos and Bruinsma. Scientific research study suggests that the 30% of global land area is used for livestock rearing already now, meaning that substantial efficiency gains are required to satisfy the rising demand within the physical constraints related to land, and to some extent water. At the same time, global mean surface temperature is projected to rise by 0.4-2.6◦C until 2050, and the contrast in precipitations between wet and dry regions and wet and dry seasons will also increase according to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report.

Many communities of Nepal rely greatly for their survival on agriculture and livestock keeping that are amongst the most climate-sensitive economic sectors. Climate change is quite an issue that has great impact on animals especially domestic animal production system affecting feed supply, challenging thermoregulatory mechanism resulting thermal stress, emerging new disease due to change in epidemiology of diseases and causing many other indirect impacts.

Thermal stress is one of the greatest climatic challenges faced by the domestic animals and global climate warming may further aggravate the condition and even provoke new episode of thermal stress condition.

?Global warming has two way effects on animal production system. In one hand it directly affects the health, reproduction, nutrition etc. of the animals resulting in poor performance, inferior product quality, outbreak of novel diseases, etc. while on the other hand there are indirect effects on animal production due to change in soil fertility, decrease in preferred vegetation, rangeland degradation, desertification and decrease in production of feed stuffs.? said Senior Scientist Yadav Kumar Bajagai.

Intensification and increase frequency of thermal stress is the most prominent impact of global warming in dairy cattle resulting in different physiological, metabolic and production disturbances. Importance of thermal stress has been increased to the dairy farmers in tropical, subtropical and even in temperate region of the world due to atmospheric warming.

Livestock is an integral part of the mixed farming system and socio-economical life in the country, and contributes nearly 26 percent to the total Agricultural Gross Domestic Product. Around 87 percent of the country?s total population keeps some form of livestock at home. Although, Nepal has one of the highest ratios of livestock and poultry to humans (5.8 animals per household) in Asia, the country?s livestock sector is declining according to the report of Ministry of Agriculture and Development.

Climate change has been emerging as serious matter especially livestock productivity is decreasing on rise of temperature, so initiative of solving this matter should be taken from government level. The Ministry of Population and Environment should be informed about institutional development, capacity enhancing, technology development and utilization, fund flow and GHG measurement, promoting carbon sequestration and updating data and information from every District Livestock Service Office. Government should take into account the principles of the Convention in formulating policies related to Climate Change in Nepal. Climate Change policies and issues have to be integrated into the national economic and social development plans & programs. They need to be incorporated in environmental policies and plans of the every country also where appropriate.