Bishnu Khatri

This practice-based research explores grassroots climate change vulnerability and resilience among high mountain communities in Nepal by documenting lived experiences and linking them with scientific knowledge and policies. Grounded in an Asset-Based Approach and Paulo Freire’s ideas of critical consciousness, the study utilizes Participatory Film Ethnography as its core theoretical and methodological framework. The research is structured around a seven-stage process: mapping, scoping, capacity building, community filming, screening/reflection, linking scientific knowledge/policy, and dialogue.

The fieldwork methodology collaboratively engaged fourteen women community researchers (aged 18–54) across thirteen communities in the Mustang and Myagdi districts of Nepal. Following community participatory filmmaking training in climate concepts and filmmaking techniques, these community researchers documented climate issues, adaptation initiatives, and policy needs. To triangulate this visual ethnography, a robust, comprehensive approach was implemented, comprising Key Informant Interviews, semi-structured interviews, Focus Group Discussions, and consultations. Research progress was systematically evaluated using innovative, arts-based Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) tools, including River Journeys, Wellbeing Thermometers, artistic reflection, and short Likert scales.

Early impacts of this research demonstrate significant women's agency building and social transformation. This process has amplified collective grassroots voices and built local confidence in articulating environmental challenges and climate impacts. Methodological impact is evidenced by developing an interactive website to document artistic research outputs in a single interactive web portal, which displays multi-linear story segments alongside climate issues. Furthermore, a co-authored practitioner handbook on participatory film-based storytelling for community agency building has been prepared, and women community researchers engaged with local to national-level stakeholders and policymakers during a screening of their lived experience documentaries, a Q&A session, and a panel discussion together with other experts at the 13th Nepal Human Rights International Film Festival. These lived experiences will be linked with scientific knowledge to develop a community-driven action agenda for a multi-level policy symposium.