Abstract
Nepal is highly vulnerable to natural disasters. A high proportion of the national GDP is lost every year in landslides, floods, and many other forms of disasters. A high number of human casualties and loss of public and private property in Nepal due to natural disasters may be attributed to inadequate public awareness, lack of disaster preparedness, weak governance, lack of coordination among the concerned government agencies, inadequate financial resources, and inadequate technical knowledge for mitigating the natural disasters. In this context, quite a few awareness and training programs for disaster risk reduction (DRR) have already been initiated in Nepal and their impact assessments are also already documented. However, effectiveness of the various implemented DRR programs is not yet evaluated through an independent study. The work presented in this paper explores local people’s knowledge on disaster risk reduction (DRR). Altogether, 124 local people from 18 to 74 years of age from randomly selected 19 districts of Nepal were interviewed focusing on various questions on disaster information, disaster knowledge, disaster readiness, disaster awareness, disaster adaptation, and disaster risk perception. The collected response data were statistically analyzed using histogram and independent sample t-tests to examine the DRR knowledge of people. An independent t-test analysis (Table 1) suggests that there is no statistically significant gender-based difference in disaster knowledge, disaster readiness, disaster awareness, and disaster risk perception of the surveyed people. Disaster adaptation capacity of the local people was evaluated and more than 60 percent of the respondents were determined to adapt state of disaster in the community. Findings of this independent research confirmed that the DRR education initiatives implemented in Nepal are not enough. The questionnaire survey results have pointed out at a few deficiencies in disseminating DRR knowledge in Nepal. We hope these findings will encourage the line agencies working in DRR issues in Nepal to modify their programs targeted for the local communities.
Highlights
Nepal is highly vulnerable to natural disasters
If a respondent responded strongly agree for all five disaster risk reduction (DRR) issues, it was considered that he/she well understood of the disaster knowledge, he/she was very ready to tackle the state of disaster, he/she is well aware for disaster risks, he/she can well adapt state of disaster and he/she is well perceived disaster risk
Gender effects on disaster risk reduction issues Demographic factors always have some relationship with DRR process in a community
Summary
Nepal is highly vulnerable to natural disasters. A high proportion of the national GDP is lost every year in landslides, floods, and many other forms of disasters. Heavy disaster losses such as during earthquakes and tsunamis or landslides and flood unexpectedly create poverty among a large number of people by destroying their houses, productive lands, other personal assets, and livelihood (Yamin et al 2005; Takeuchi et al 2011). Poverty is both cause and consequence of disasters in under-developed or developing countries. When scarce resources such as time, energy, expertise, and funding are suddenly diverted in relief and recovery work, the overall development activities are delayed significantly
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