Successful localization of disaster risk reduction efforts in Nepal is supported through well-coordinated UN partners present at the provincial levels, and innovative research partnership
Nepal is exposed to a range of natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, droughts, and severe weather events including lightning storms. Nepal's population is very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as it largely relies on agriculture,
Nepal is exposed to a range of natural hazards, such as floods, landslides, droughts, and severe weather events including lightning storms. Nepal's population is very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as it largely relies on agriculture, tourism and natural resources, with a shift towards services and away from agriculture in recent years. The accelerated melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas increases the risk from related hazards such as glacial lake outburst floods and avalanches. It also impacts the availability of water and hydropower for 2 billion people downstream of major Asian rivers originating in the Himalayas in the longer term. Nepal is further prone to earthquakes as it is located above the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. Environmental sustainability, climate and disaster resilience are a priority of the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2023-2027 for Nepal, including a focus area on the reduction of vulnerabilities, disaster risk reduction, preparedness and effective response and recovery. The Results Group on Disaster Risk Reduction is co-chaired by WFP and UNDP, who coordinate closely with the Resident Coordinator's Office and the Humanitarian Country Team. Leaving no-one behind and the localization of sustainable development efforts cut across the four priorities of the Framework and translates into targeting the most vulnerable through household-level data gathering and supporting social protection systems.
The United Nations organizations are supporting Nepal's localised approach to resilience building and disaster risk reduction at the federal, provincial, and local levels of government. Close and sustained cooperation at all levels of government since the federalisation in 2017 has led to the creation of disaster risk reduction plans that are implemented with government resources, with the United Nations organizations mainly being requested to provide specialised technical support.
An innovative system of providing single entry points for government officials is the Provincial Focal Point Agencies concept, which nominates one of the UN organizations present at the provincial level as the focal point to liaise with provincial governments, relay information, convene development partners around the request for support, and hold coordination meetings. The Provincial Focal Point Agencies are supported in their function through a direct line of communication with the UN Resident Coordinator. This concept has already demonstrated its efficiency for disaster risk governance and emergency management. For example, during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when travel restrictions were in place and around 100,000 migrant workers were returning to Nepal at once, the conditions in more than 1,000 quarantine sites were assessed by locally-based development partners. At the request of the Government of Nepal, the Provincial Focal Points Agencies reached out to the partners, trained them on the survey provided by the Government, and the assessment of quarantine sites was completed within two weeks.
In 2023, the Promoting Action for Disaster Risk Governance and Working to Achieve Preparedness for Risk Reduction through Technical Assistance in Nepal (PARIWARTAN) project concluded. It was implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in consortium with the National Society for Earthquake Technology - Nepal, Practical Action Consulting, and Lutheran World Federation. It provided technical assistance to the three tiers of government (federal level, 7 provinces, 753 local levels) in implementing the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act in a coordinated and inclusive manner. The Disaster Risk Management Localization Manual: An Operational Training Manual for Disaster Risk Management Capacity Building of Local Governments was developed in close coordination with the Government of Nepal. More than 19,900 government officials were trained on disaster risk reduction and management in all 753 local level municipalities that supported strengthening community resilience. The training has spurred local government actions such as the formulation or amendment of legal documents, standards and guidelines to implement disaster preparedness and response activities, the increase of budgets allocated for disaster risk management, the formation of disaster risk management committees, as well as a shift in focus from response to preparedness prioritizing multiple hazards prevalent in the local context.
Over the last 10 years the United Nations Country Team has built a unique and innovative research partnership with a consortium of universities to provide new forms of evidence to guide disaster risk governance. This consortium, called Sajag-Nepal, includes organisations in Nepal, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand. Working together, the consortium and the Resident Coordinator's Office have pioneered a new scenario ensemble[1] approach to understanding hazards, enabling risk-informed contingency planning for both the annual monsoon and for infrequent large earthquakes. For earthquakes, the Resident Coordinator's Office worked with researchers to develop an ensemble of possible impacts in a future earthquake, irrespective of where that earthquake occurs. This ensemble now forms the basis of both cluster contingency plans and provincial preparedness planning. For the monsoon, Sajag-Nepal researchers are using data on past monsoon impacts recorded in the government's portal to anticipate the possible pattern of impacts in the next monsoon, helping the humanitarian clusters and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) to develop a more informed preparedness plan. The research has also developed a novel way of anticipating landslide impacts during the monsoon using 14-day rainfall forecasts. The Resident Coordinator's Office is exploring the use of this approach as a readiness trigger for possible anticipatory action. The project is also using participatory mapping in several landslide-prone areas of Nepal to understand how people move and how their exposure to landslides varies over different time scales - with the ultimate goal of being able to better map the risks that residents face in these communities.
The Strengthening Urban Preparedness, Earthquake Preparedness and Response in Western Regions of Nepal (SUPER) project is being implemented by a UNDP, UNICEF, UN Women consortium along with local implementing partners across three provinces and four municipalities in Western Nepal. The project works in close coordination with the NDRRMA at the federal level, as well as with provincial and local level decision makers. The project uses the earthquake scenario ensembles that were co-created by the Resident Coordinator's Office and the Sajag-Nepal team. It enhances and institutionalizes municipal and provincial preparedness for urban and earthquake risks in 3 provinces and 4 municipalities in the western regions of Nepal. It does so by enhancing the understanding of risk, preparedness measures, reducing risk, including through reinforcing building codes and retrofitting practices. The project works with multiple stakeholders at all three federal tiers, including the community, private ector, academia, international governmental organizations, UN organizations, the Nepal Red Cross Society, and international and national non-governmental organizations.
As the government has ownership of the project and provides it with a budget in its annual plans the sustainability of the work is ensured. The project results are delivered under the leadership of respective government authorities and include impact modelling of potential earthquake scenarios, vulnerability and capacity assessments, strengthening Emergency Operation Centres and capacity building - for example supporting the development of earthquake contingency plans for clusters (such as Health, Protection, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), which were developed with the leadership of relevant provincial ministries and were referred to extensively during the 2023 Jajarkot earthquake response.
The SUPER consortium collaborates with the UN Resident Coordinator's Office, and partners such as WHO, WFP, and IFRC to strengthen humanitarian architecture and cluster mechanisms in provinces, also through the development of cluster contingency plans. This strengthening proved very effective in response to the Jajarkot earthquake in 2023. For example, the implementation of the Health Contingency Plan was endorsed within the same day, and all sectoral information was efficiently relayed by WFP as the Provincial Focal Point Agency. The project has been working towards enabling gender equality, disability and social inclusion mainstreaming in disaster risk reduction through developing a checklist for disaster preparedness, as well as a gender-responsive costing framework for earthquakes and urban flooding, conducting a women's safety audit together with women-led community-based organizations, and a simulation exercise on resource pooling with gender-responsive considerations.
UNICEF's Child-Centred Disaster Risk Reduction Programme emphasizes the importance of disaster and climate risk assessments to take children's vulnerabilities and special needs into account. This includes raising children's awareness of hazards and what to do as prevention and preparedness measures and empowering them to act as multipliers within their communities.
Nepal has a UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) Anticipatory Action pilot framework to provide collective anticipatory humanitarian action to people at risk of predicted severe monsoon flooding with delivery planned through UNFPA, UNICEF, UN Women, WFP and WHO in partnership with the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS) and national NGOs and in close collaboration with the federal, provincial and local authorities.
Also, IOM, jointly with the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security (MoLESS), Tribhuvan University's Central Department of Population Studies (CDPS) and the National Planning Commission have established a Migration School in 2023, a two-week academic forum to foster collaboration among educational institutions, policymakers and experts on human mobility, including climate and disaster displacement.
[1] scenario ensembles: estimation of the likelihood and scale of future hazard impacts, determining locations where impacts are most likely to occur, along with the average and worst-case impacts for all locations, so that both emergency relief and disaster risk reduction activities can be prioritized; source: Robinson, T.; Rosser, N.; Densmore, A.; Oven, K.; Shrestha, S.; Guragain, R. (2018) Use of scenario ensembles for deriving seismic risk