Devendra Gauchan illustrates the potential of Neglected and Underutilized Species (NUS) in enhancing food security and nutrition in the Himalayan region. Successful cases from India and Nepal demonstrate how NUS can uplift local livelihoods, enhance nutrition, and mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change. Devendra promotes the use of a new framework promoting NUS integration across production, processing, marketing, and consumption. He emphasizes the importance of the “3Ms” strategy, which involves implementing multi-stakeholder, multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary approaches to foster sustainable, climate-resilient, and nutrition-sensitive solutions for sustainable, climate-resilient, and nutrition-sensitive changes in mountains agrifood systems.

The third edition of the Knowledge Exchange Series will follow the same format of pre-recorded expert videos to be viewed by participants prior to the engaging 90-minute dialogue session. Each session will bring on a relevant, timely and vital theme around the nexus of nutrition, climate and agrifood system transformation. Building upon the previous series on India and responding to the demand from the practitioners in the South Asia region, this edition encompasses the challenges and solutions for the entire region. The series will highlight innovations taking place in various countries of the region to present practical and actionable solutions on how to transform agrifood systems to address these concurrent and mutually reinforcing crises.