Dear all,

More to my message a few days ago concerning EQ recovery in Nepal. After eight months, the Nepal parliament has only just passed the National Reconstruction Authority Act. Parliament and government have been distracted with implementation of the new constitution and the civil unrest that delimitation of new states triggered. Little if any of the money pledged by international donors for recovery has been spent. Even now with the official start of reconstruction, there are huge issues of capacity (see http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/news/2015-12-17/over-50000-masons-needed-for-reconstruction.html ), transparency and accountability.

Another suggestion that bad governance remains a massive obstacle to happiness, well-being and safety is the fact that Nepal is one of a small handful of countries that has still not produced a national climate change plan. 185 countries had provided them before the recent COP 21 in Paris. Why does this matter? Rural people in hillzones and mountain valleys in Nepal, some of whom affected by the April earthquake are living still in self-built temporary shelter as the winter deepens, are exposed to landslides triggered by monsoon rains. These rains are also vital for their food production. Climate change will affect the monsoon, and it should be the responsibility of government to foresee these impacts to the extent possible and to assist rural people to adapt.

In short, as argued in the UNISDR's Global Assessment of Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) in 2011, 2013 and 2015, governance is one of the most important factors in disaster reduction. Pressure needs to be applied to the elite who have long dominated politics in Nepal for improved risk governance: pressure by bi- and multi-lateral institutions and civil society, both national and international.


Dr. Ben Wisner
Aon-Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London, UK
& Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania
& Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."