Rebuilding Nepalese Villages after the 2015 Earthquakes
ASIA--PACIFIC, 3 Aug 2015
Dr. Hari Kumar Shrestha – TRANSCEND Media Service
- Background
Nepal was struck by the devastating 7.6 Magnitude earthquake on April 25, 2015, which was epicentered at Bahrapak, Gorkha. After that, Nepal experienced hundreds of aftershocks and a second earthquake of 7.3 Magnitude on May 12, 2015 [1]. This earthquake causes more than 8,856 deaths and nearly 22,309 injuries of human and death of 512,145 livestock including 14, 456 big, 38,884 small and 460,805 birds in more than 15 districts in Nepal [2]. In addition, this earthquake also destroyed over 15 different palaces and monuments, and damaged roads, office buildings, and many other infrastructures. Nepalese governmental agencies, security personnel, hospitals, community organizations, volunteers, I/NGOs, religious groups, individuals and several other national and international organizations worked together in rescuing and reliefing operations in different parts of Nepal. However, the existing supports are not sufficient to cater the problem of earthquakes victims.
Considering this situation, this paper highlights some re-building plans for the growth and development of Nepalese villages after earthquakes-2015. The information included in this article is based on my field observation and available secondary data.
- Re-building of villages through
a. awareness programme
Earthquake is one of the most common, unpredictable occurrences on the Earth. Houses and buildings can be severely damaged, and the ground can laterally split apart. Sometimes, the risk is still very high with partially damaged house also. In Nepal, a group of government engineers have also suggested people not to stay inside the damaged houses and risky places. In addition, they have put red, green and yellow stickers based on the levels of damage and risk, i.e., not allowed to stay, allowed to stay after repairing and allows staying respectively. However, some people have been staying in the same damaged houses and areas. Moreover, there is high risk of land sliding in the earthquake areas [3]. Therefore, we believe that raising earthquake awareness campaign is a major component for bridging them the knowledge gap [4]. It will help to eradicate myths and fallacies and communities can be convinced of the impending seismic risk and the ways to reduce damage. Therefore, people should be aware through adopting earthquake safety day campaign, radio/TV programmes, mobile earthquake clinic, field tours, and community based disaster risk management activities.
b. proper food supplement and public health care
After great earthquakes, several places have been suffering from food, clean drinking water and sanitation. Based on the formal data of NDRRP (2015), it has been supplied about 102,710 qtls rice, 1,506 qtls sugar, 2,878 qtls sugar, 14,651 qtls. chiura, 187,874 kgs noodles, 194,040 cartons biscuits, 17,735 qtls dry foods, 104,944 cartons water and 10,611 other food items. Some organizations have also been supplied rice and some other food items, such as bitten rice, noodles, sugar, oil, biscuits, hot food, etc in an informal ways. However, food materials were not sufficient to address the hand to mouth problem of poor earthquake victims. During food distribution programme, most of the influential rich people have also received equal amount of food materials as equal as that was received by poor people, and remote areas are still not addressed properly [5]. Therefore, government should give the top priority for supplying food to the rural poor for their survival.
In addition, most of the kitchens after earthquakes are outside their houses, and water sources are also not safe. Therefore, there are higher possibilities of food and water contamination with dust and dirt pollution, and heavy rain. It may create a problem of Cholera, especially with children and mother. In Haiti, due to negligence of authority in providing proper health care system, many people were suffered from Cholera and other associated disease outbreaks. It is because, three years after the 2010 earthquake, the healthcare system was still devastated in Haiti [6]. Therefore, learning a lesson from Haiti, public health care system should be in a priority list in Nepal, which could provide people a regular disease prevention and health check up.
c. construction and re-construction of houses and roads
Previously, rural houses, buildings and structures were constructed and re-constructed using their local materials and technology. However, majority of the modern houses and buildings are also found to be constructed without proper building construction policy and norms, which was due to negligence, corruption mentality, lack of accountability, and poor knowledge and experience of concerned authority, and/or technicians [7]. In this context, Prof. Structural Engineer Rajesh Dhakal says that “there is technical crime in Nepal” [7; 8]. Therefore, it led to damage easily with earthquake either in rural or urban areas. These sort of low quality structures are also considered as the killers during earthquake. In addition, some villages are more risky due to cracking of lands and land sliding after earthquakes [9; 10]. Due to lack of financial resources, many people and schools couldn’t construct or re-construct their house and school buildings respectively; where they are compelled to use the same. Therefore, Government of Nepal (GoN) has to re-think as soon as possible in building and re-building houses and buildings that is safe and fit to the local conditions as well as shifting of risky villages to safer places if necessary to protect them from any casualties, especially from heavy rains in rainy season. After shifting of villages, we could preserve it as a museum.
Based on our observation, most of the rural roads are muddy and not constructed proper considering engineering tools and environmental issues. Usually, the roads re-/constructed in the winter season without managing waste soils, may lead to slide away in the rainy season. Therefore, such kinds of roads are more dangerous after earthquakes. Nowadays, due to land sliding along road sides, many accidents occurred with serious human casualties [11]. Therefore, government should have to make a thorough study either to use or close such kind of risky rural roads. Otherwise, many human casualties may occur in the peak rainy season. More importantly, government shouldn’t give permission for constructing rural roads without proper planning and evaluation of proposed areas.
Similarly, some villages are emerging towards towns/cities [12]. Learning a lesson from Kathmandu valley, it is necessary to make a proper integrated town/city planning. It is also necessary to manage enough free space for any kind of emergency and play grounds for children and elderly people. Previously, there were series of beautiful public gardens on the foot trails at villages, which has been already captured by its surrounding people. Therefore, based on the last land mapping data, the government has to return it for its public use.
d. preservation and conservation of historic places and natural resources
Some very old royal palaces, temples, gumbas, churches, schools, colleges and personal houses are important historic places at villages. After earthquakes, some structures are almost disappeared, and some are already collapsed before earthquakes for a long time whereas new generation people are unaware of it. All the structures should be re-build and build keeping its original quality.
Natural resources include rivers, streams, water source, forest & forest land, agriculture lands, hills, pound/lakes and wild animals, birds, fauna & floras are the beauty of villages, which are necessary for maintaining good ecosystem and environment. However, deforestation, firing, grazing, hunting, etc. drastically affect existence of natural resources. After earthquake 2015, natural resources in Nepal are at a great risk due to land sliding and for getting timbers and sheltering for earthquake affected people. Therefore, responding to diverse geographical and cultural contexts of Nepal, her conservation policy needs to count on local cultural institutions, cultural practices and economic bases [13]. For this, in integrated preservation and conservation approaches, including concerned agencies related to agriculture, forestry, soil conservation, environment, road, archaeology, etc are necessary. Therefore, the participatory approach has to be adopted to empower local people, including their active participation in planning and decisions making, and responsibilities at the local level in natural resource management [14].
e. visit home programme
Most of the villages have giant human resources in different disciplines, such as agriculture, engineering, forestry, sociology, economics, genetic engineering, public health, environment, climate change, rural development, governance, statistics, and political science. However, brain drain from village to other parts of country and abroad is a critical problem at villages. Therefore, villages couldn’t take a benefit of their knowledge, skills, and experiences for its wellbeing. This situation has been existed in most of the rural areas in Nepal. If local governments start to arrange a “visit home programme” by inviting their village think tankers (experts/scientist) once a year before its annual planning, they can get an extra advantage from them for the betterment of their village. Therefore, visit home programme is more important for re-building villages with their own experts. In addition, government if made a provision to involved retired persons with special facilities, they could provide excellent services at his/her village.
f. agro-forestry based industries
Since agriculture is the main occupation of villages, it is necessary to involve the earthquakes victims in sustainable income generation activities, i.e., agro-forestry based industries primarily focusing on seed, fruits, vegetables, spices, flowers, aromatic/herbal, honey production, and goats, cattle, poultry, aquaculture and/or home garden. For this, they have to be supplied free production inputs, infrastructures and soft loans. Therefore, it is time to make an appropriate planning and decision to brain gaining and retaining rural youths for national buildings. Some rural areas can be developed as a hub of agriculture production, collection and distribution sub-system in Nepal. For this, capacity building of local farmers is must especially on quality inputs management including seed, compost, irrigation; soil/land and forest management, as well as agriculture production, harvesting, post-harvest and marketing management.
Village is naturally beautiful place with its series of tars (plains), hills and Himalayas, farm lands, dense forest lands, animals and birds, rivers, small streams, credible handicrafts and/or beautiful smiley people with their traditional culture, food and dress. Therefore, some villages could be a good place for agro- and eco-tourism. For this, a home staying programme as adopted in Kavre district would be an interesting case for replicating at villages, where world communities could spend their vacation and money to enjoy and refresh there [15].
g. electing local government
It is an unfortunate that the election for local governments in Nepal has not been held for about 2 decades [16]. Since then, the local government has been running by the government officials, i.e. village development secretary. During this period, planning, implementation and monitoring of village development activities; resource conservation and mobilization; accountability and transparency of funds are a great concern. The absence of local bodies and the lack of proper service delivery mechanism at villages have also seriously affected the rescue and relief operations. This situation will create a challenge in re-building villages. Therefore, election of local government is must including all the parties in a main stream. Otherwise, the same situation exists for a long time that may hamper the developmental activities of Nepal, especially villages. Existing local organizations, such as co-operatives, clubs, mother’s group, farmers’ group, community forestry users’ group, security office, schools, health centre and guthis may also play a coordinating and supplementary role in solving these problems. Therefore, government should strengthen all the local organizations through their capacity building and providing some infrastructural facilities.
h. managing rescue and relief funds
Natural disaster is unpredictable that create vulnerabilities. Many social organizations and individuals have been collected funds in the name of earthquake victims, however, they have not utilized it properly. Therefore, government should monitor strongly. Based on the lesson learnt from this earthquake of 2015, villages should be prepared for more effective response from disasters. Government should make a clear policy and guidelines directives, monitoring mechanisms for managing rescue and relief funds, which is missing in the current policy and programme delivered by the Honorable President of Nepal for the year 2015/16. For this government should provide seed money each year to the villages. Various governmental and private media can be used to updating information very effectively.
3.Conclusions
The Great Earthquake- 2015 has devastated Nepalese society, economy, historic places and environment. It has lost lives of many people, animals, fauna and flora. The victims will have very hard life and difficult time to get rid of this critically bad situation, especially at remote villages. Many people still lack of food, drinking water, shelters and health care [17].Therefore, some thoughts and initiatives for recovery and progress of the country are important to deliver there. However, re-building efforts are very challenging issues, which is necessary to be handled very intelligently and tactically without hurting people and damaging our pure environment. In this historic challenge, we have to show our dedication, wisdom and support for re-building our villages. Therefore, coming planning should focus on rescue and relief; public health; construction, re-construction and shifting of risky villages, and involving them in a sustainable agro-forestry production sectors providing free production inputs and infrastructures. However, due to lack of appropriate coordination and database at villages [18], planning process is totally relied on the verbal database of village secretary, which diverts the available resources as per the vested interest of data providers. Therefore, in some cases, relief materials were found to be distributed to unnecessary people at many villages [5]. For solving these problems, there should be strong political commitment and coordination. Hence, government requires huge amount of budget [15] as well as powerful and independent natural disaster management commission, which can make its decision effectively and efficiently on the basis of its ground reality rather than political influence. In addition, government should make an effective monitoring and evaluation as well as punishment system if found mishandling of relief materials and resources. This article would be useful to our communities, intellectuals, planners, policy makers and concerned stakeholders for re-building villages. Then, again we will have brighter and beautiful smiles as our Himalayas. Otherwise, Nepal would also face a problem as seen in Haiti [6].
NOTES:
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Hari Kumar Shrestha a Ph.D. holder in agriculture is a Vice-president of HEADS Nepal; Coordinator of HEADS Natural Disaster Rescue and Relief Management Committee, and Chief of the Department of R&D of HEADS-Nepal. He is also a President of Lumbini Kapilvastu Promotion Global Committee, Nepal; Coordinator and member of Lumbini Kapilvastu Day Movement SARRC Regional and Global Committee respectively. In addition, he is also a General Secretary of Agronomy Society of Nepal; Vice-president of Bio-technology Society of Nepal, Advisor of NRNA-Taiwan. Besides he has published a number of research articles on issues related to agriculture, poems, gajals, travelogue and social development. He also worked for the Government of Nepal for more than 20 years before 10 years. Currently, he has allocated his 50% time for RIMS-Nepal as a paid employee and 50% time for volunteering social activities to help people in Nepal.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 3 Aug 2015.
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