Indigenous knowledge are those skills and practices which are developed over a period of time through accumulation of experience and understanding by the native communities and are inherited from generation to generation. Nepal is considered to be one of the richest countries in terms of indigenous knowledge due to its geographical diversity and many ethnic communities with communities endowed with rich indigenous knowledge for agricultural practices. Indigenous knowledge is sustainable as it has evolved after many years of observation and experience. My focus will be on documenting the indigenous knowledge used in agriculture. Indigenous practices are farmer friendly, socially accepted, economically viable, environmentally sound and suited to the specific local and environment conditions. Documentations will help in developing the contents of indigenous technological knowledge which will be disseminated to the entire community for its future implication.

Nepal’s indigenous communities and people possess age-old knowledge and practices that can be crucial in fighting climate change, moving towards green recovery and ensuring sustainability. Sadly, We’re losing this knowledge at a fast pace. To prevent this from happening and to identify and document this valuable knowledge, Himalayan Climate Initiative and Avni Center for Sustainability have launched Indigenous knowledge fellowship for Nepali youth who are passionate about sustainability  and climate change, and interested in documenting and making indigenous knowledge mainstream.

I feel glad to share that I have been selected for the fellowship. The selected fellow will Identify a community and an indigenous practice they want to After selection, they will start working to document the idea and complete the documentation in one month by travelling to the place where the  knowledge is found. I have decided to document the Magar Community residing in the Vyas municipality of Tanahun District. This community has been endowed with rich indigenous knowledge for agricultural practices. In this community, I have found the traditional agricultural tools, indegenuous technical knowledge in pest management and indigenous food variety  that are slowly being lost due to lack of documentation and are used in practice by few peoples only and requires documentation.