Abstract
Responsive disaster governance cannot eliminate natural disasters but it can minimise human losses and property damage and reconcile people’s concerns. This paper examines the state of disaster governance at the time of the 2015 earthquake disaster in Nepal through the lens of political economy. This research confirms an earlier assertion that government regulatory and enforcement mechanisms to cope with disasters in developing nations are weak and fragmented. It was found that the disaster response was weak on many fronts, including that there was a lack of a ‘one-window policy’ for enforcement of building regulations and for disaster response, with weaker regulation for private developers. Other weaknesses observed were building code violations by the permitting authority, circumvention of the inspection process by local residents, corruption in the permitting process, and weaker trust and collaboration between the government and local residents.
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Notes
- 1.
Damages = the combined replacement cost of destroyed houses, the repair cost of partially damaged houses, the replacement cost of household goods destroyed and damages to the real estate sector.
Losses = the combined cost of demolition and clearing, costs of provision of transitional shelter, rental losses and financial losses sustained by the real estate sector.
- 2.
Apart from NPC (2015), more detailed sectoral assessment is provided in volume B of the report: ‘Nepal Earthquake 2015: Post Disaster Needs Assessment, Vol. B: Sector Reports’, Government of Nepal, National Planning Commission, Singha Durbar, Kathmandu.
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Karki, T., Salike, N. (2020). Disaster Governance in South Asia: Special Reference to Nepal. In: Bandyopadhyay, S., Pathak, C., Dentinho, T. (eds) Urbanization and Regional Sustainability in South Asia. Contemporary South Asian Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23796-7_20
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