COPING STRATEGIES WITH MUTUAL COOPERATION AND USE OF LOCAL RESOURCES ON DISASTER BY NEPALESE RURAL PEOPLE: A CASE FROM NUWAKOT DISTRICT, NEPAL

Abstract

Nepal is vulnerable to environmental disasters such as earthquakes, landslides, floods and hurricanes. These disasters disproportionately affect rural life. Disaster risks are often approached in a purely technical and physical manner, but people’s behaviour in the face of natural hazards and disasters is influenced by various factors such as historical, economic, political and socio-cultural factors. This case uses a post-disaster resilience assessment focusing on cooperation during the recovery after a severe earthquake that hit central Nepal in 2015 which impacted rural communities. This paper analyses the people’s behaviour and its basic logic at post-earthquake recovery from a socio-cultural aspect focusing on the gaun, the basic minimal informal social unit. Special consideration was made to the ethnic heterogeneity of the communities studied. For the purpose of this study, key informants interview (KII), group discussion and transect walk were used. This study finds that gaun based local resources are traditional and primary resources for people’s daily life but the ward and VDC based resources are newly formed. Various forms of cooperation were observed regardless ethnicity at the gaun level. This study further reveals that local people’s activities towards the post-disaster recovery can be described in three periods. They are: emergent, resilient, reconstruction periods. On the basis of the study of these periods for post-disaster recovery, a very good social relationship among gaun people at emergency was realized.