Community Resilience to Disasters
"Local communities living in floodplains have developed knowledge in terms of human and social capital to cope with disasters. Such traditional and local knowledge needs to be identified to make effectives strategies at local level."
The mountains of Nepal are considered disaster hotspots due to their steep and delicate terrain, fragile geology, and rapid infrastructure development with little regard to these mountain characteristics. River floodplains, in particular, have been major areas of hazards. Rivers have historically played a pivotal role in the growth and evolution of societies across the globe, such as the Nile in Egypt, the Yangtze in China, and the Indus in Pakistan and India. Rivers provide various direct and indirect services. River floodplains and riverbanks are agricultural repositories as floodwaters deposit nutrient-rich organic sediments in such areas. They serve as habitats for a wide range of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and render several ecosystem services. They also facilitate transportation, trade, and commerce. Rivers, therefore, have been venues of cultural exchange, facilitating the spread of knowledge and ideas.
Local people are busy collecting wooden logs brought by river from upstream (mainly mountains)
Some river floodplains experience frequent and intense natural hazards such as floods, sediment deposition, and river channel shifts. Local communities living in such areas have developed knowledge in terms of human and social capital to cope with disasters. The Koshi River is known for its frequent floods and river channel shifts, causing extensive damage to crops, livestock, and infrastructure, and displacing thousands of people.
Boating is compulsatory to reach some villages
Communities living in disaster-prone areas have typical socio-ecological systems, sustaining themselves on local resources. Traditional and local knowledge (e.g., know-how, skills, and practices) is often embedded in the form of social and cultural practices that are developed, sustained, and passed on from generation to generation. Local communities enhance their resilience to disasters by using local resources effectively in a given time and place and adopting site-specific housing and settlement practices.
The Himavat Institute is conducting
research on community adaptation to disaster risk reduction, focusing on
Traditional and Local Ecological Knowledge to explore strategies adopted by
local communities living in the floodplain areas of the Koshi River.
If you want to be part of this
research and support us, please contact us at contact@himavatinstitute.com.np.
