Amit Chakarwarty
Nepal – Scenario of Disaster Management
Nepal is one of the most disaster-prone countries of the world due to its complex geophysical condition and poor socio-economic situation. The country is facing various types of natural disasters like: flood, landslide, fire, earthquake, windstorm, hailstorm, lightning, glacier lake outburst flood, drought, epidemic, avalanche and so on. Further it is also exposed to various types of natural disasters due to rugged and steep topography, extreme weather events, and fragile geological conditions. Nepal’s vulnerability to disasters is compounded by rapid population growth, and development of haphazard and unplanned settlements.
The rural houses are built mostly with the wood and thatched roofs and are hence very weak and majority of them remain highly vulnerable to disasters such as fire hazards, earthquakes, landslides, and floods. The disaster occurs almost every year in one or the other part of the country. [i]
Thousands of families every year become homeless due to natural disasters and most of these are poor families as they usually live in the disaster-prone areas due to socio economic conditions and the repressive caste system. It is obvious that they are more victimized as they are in un planned settlements in the hazard/risk affected area with minimal preventive measures (using poor construction materials), haphazard use of land for agriculture and other activities.
Large tracts of the rural areas are often inhabited by low income earning communities dependent upon agriculture, livestock, daily wage, forest products, small business, and service for their livelihoods. Once the disaster occurs, these extremely vulnerable people are mere dependents (for a long time) on external aid in absence of community safety nets and weak government infrastructure and support systems.
The types of natural and human induced hazards in Nepal, drawn from the active dataset (table 1) maintained by MoHA[ii], covering a period of 45 years (1971 to 2015) tells us that a total of 22,373 disaster events have been recorded during this period. This works out to an average annual exposure to 500 events of disaster[iii].
Table 1 MAJOR HAZARDS IN NEPAL: LOSS AND DAMAGE (1971-2015)
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Rationale of the study
Nepal has been classified by the World Bank 2015 as one of the ‘hot- spot’ countries in the world with high risk for multi-hazard and disasters. Accordingly, “Nepal is ranked as 11th at most risk country in the world in terms of its vulnerability to earthquake, 30th with respect to floods and ranked 4th at risk of climate change induced disasters, making it the 20th most disaster-prone country among 198 countries in the world” (UNDP/BCPR, 2004). According to “National Strategy for Disaster Risk Management in Nepal 2009” of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), Nepal suffers a loss of about 1000 people’s life every year due to natural hazards, and a direct loss of an average of nearly 1208 million Nepali rupees per year. Every year millions of national and international expenditures are spent on disaster response activities, which absorbed a great deal of resources which would normally be allocated for well grounded national development efforts.
Nepal is one of the most disaster-prone countries of the world due to complex geophysical condition and poor socio-economic situation. The country is facing various types of natural disasters like: flood, landslide, fire, earthquake, windstorm, hailstorm, lightning, glacier lake outburst flood, drought, epidemic, avalanche and so on. Further it is also exposed to various types of natural disasters due to rugged and steep topography, extreme weather events, and fragile geological conditions.
Key Words:
Hazard, Vulnerability, Capacity, Disaster, Risk, Prevention, Mitigation, Preparedness, Early warning, Response, Recovery, Disaster Risk Management
- Hazard: As per the UNISDR, 2009 hazard defined as dangerous phenomenon, substance, human activity or condition that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage. (UNISDR, 2009)
- Vulnerability: The characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard and the predisposition to suffer damage due to external events (UNISDR, 2009)
- Capacity: The combination of all the strengths, attributes and resources available within a community, society or organization that can be used to achieve agreed goals. (UNISDR, 2009)
- Disaster: A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. (UNISDR, 2009)
- Risk: The combination of the probability of an event and its negative consequences (UNISDR, 2009)
- Prevention: The outright avoidance of adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters (UNISDR, 2009)
- Mitigation: The lessening or limitation of the adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters (UNISDR, 2009)
- Preparedness: The knowledge and capacities developed by governments, professional response and recovery organizations, communities and individuals to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from, the impacts of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions. (UNISDR, 2009)
- Early warning: The set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities and organizations threatened by a hazard to prepare and to act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce the possibility of harm or loss. (UNISDR, 2009)
- Response: The provision of emergency services and public assistance during or immediately after a disaster in order to save lives, reduces health impacts, ensure public safety and meet the basic subsistence needs of the people affected processes for post crisis recovery. It encompasses the restoration of basic services, livelihoods, shelter, governance, security and rule of law, environment and social dimensions, including the reintegration of displaced populations. (UNISDR, 2009)
- Recovery: The restoration, and improvement where appropriate, of facilities, livelihoods and living conditions of disaster-affected communities, including efforts to reduce disaster risk factors. (UNISDR, 2009)
Disaster Risk Management: The systematic process of using administrative directives, organizations, and operational skills and capacities to implement strategies, policies and improved coping capacities in order to lessen the adverse impacts of hazards and the possibility of disaster. (UNISDR, 2009)
Observations and findings of your project
- Hazard Mapping:
As per field assessment and PRA, the hazard identified and rank the top 10 hazards of Alampu VDC. The first ranked hazard is earthquake which may occurred once and have highest impact in community rather than other.
[gview file=”http://www.nepalgunjnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2.-Hazard-Mapping.pdf”]
- Hazard Cause and Impact:
As per field assessment, the understanding of community for different disaster and their impact shared by community. Mostly the hazard cause is Natural and some of hazard were occurred by man-made. The impact of hazard somehow interrelated with each other.
Table 6 Hazard cause and Impact
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- Possible Preventive Measures:
As per assessment, the community identified the possible measures for hazards and that were self manage by community rather than looking resources from other stakeholders.
[gview file=”http://www.nepalgunjnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/4.-Preventive-Measures.pdf”]
- Hazard Timeline:
As per assessment, most of the disaster were occurred frequently in community and impact the human and physical infrastructure both as well as stakeholders identified that response immediately to the hazard.
[gview file=”http://www.nepalgunjnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/5.-Hazard-Timeline.pdf”]
- Hazard Calendar:
[gview file=”http://www.nepalgunjnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6.-Hazard-Calender.pdf”]
- Seasonal Calendar:
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- Agriculture Calendar:
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Resource Mapping (Community Level)
Figure 4 Resource Mapping (Community level)
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- Resource Mapping (Ward level)
Figure 5 Resource Mapping (Ward level)
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- Resource Within VDC level
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- Vulnerability Mapping
Table 13 vulnerability mapping
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Conclusions
Based on the findings, the research concluded that community need to more focus on preparedness because after earthquake 2015 they got opportunity for making hazard prevented private, community and school buildings. The community have right time for preparedness of hazard for future. The norms, values and policies of the government were followed during formulating and implementing the preparedness action plan. The research supported DMC to develop the LDRMP action plan and shared with ward for endorse in rural municipality. The LDRMP cover overall preparedness actions and hazard wise actions plan which need to implement by Alampu DMC (which is attached as Annexure).
The research findings shows hazards frequency, time frame of occurrence, impact, calendar of disaster and season, local resources available in community and preparedness actions. The research is supported Alampu DMC to develop their capacity on DRR.
Salient recommendations on the problems studied
The recommendation of research focuses on preparedness of disaster to decrease the impact. The recommendations for preparedness are as follows,
- It is seems that most of the hazards were occurred frequently in community and DMC committee need to safe locations.
- The DMC should focus on action plan of preparedness which is agreed in LDRMP for preparedness.
- Disaster related materials have to be produced and disseminated with visual-digital images.
- Potential pocket areas have to be promoted with intensive support, organic production, branding and market linkage.
- The coordination with the government and stakeholders to provide support on preparedness actions.
- HHs level preparedness plan need to be introduce for HHs level preparedness
- In providing trainings, visual documents using could be more effective to make them visualize and then realize for change.
- Under constructed private, community and schools should be constructed through guideline of hazard preparedness introduce by GoN.
- Public awareness i.e. holding board, poster, radio message and Notice board need to install for awareness of different hazards
- Deployment of 1 focal person for DRR from ward office to make day to day communication with NEOC
- Community level management committee need to be formed and build capacity of them for preparedness
- DMC need to update the safety and first aid kits for better preparedness and maintenance of safety equipment.
Summary of the project report
The research is conducted in Bigu Rural Municipality Ward Number 6 of Alampu and mainly focus on the DRR preparedness, response and recovery actions. After the research outcome were:
- Ranking of Hazards of community and identified the top 10 hazards which impacted the community
- Hazards causes and their impact within community and their possible management by community themselves
- The calendar of different hazards occurrence and timeframe as well as the seasonal calendar of 30 years ago and now.
- The resource mapping shows the local resources available within community and the status of resources were identified.
- Mapping of local and district headquarter stakeholders in diagram for coordination during responses.
- The vulnerability mapping shows that communities who are vulnerable with hazards and how they need to preparedness
- The LDRMP introduce in DMC with detail action plan of each hazards for future and endorse through RM meeting for budget allocation.
The research conducted with discussion with different stakeholders in local level, Ward Leader, HP, Police Office and district level with NRA, DCC, DEO as well as community individuals through HHs visit.
*End of Document*
[1] http://drrportal.gov.np/risk-profile-of-nepal
[1] Ministry of Home Affairs (Government of Nepal)
[1] http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/news/2017-08-14/disastrous-disaster-preparedness.html
[1] https://www.preventionweb.net/countries/npl/data/
[1] http://www.ifrc.org/Global/Documents/Secretariat/201610/WDR%202016-FINAL_web.pdf
