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Role of Local Government in Strengthening Disaster Resilience in Nepal

Nepal’s unique geography makes the country more vulnerable to disasters. Earthquakes, floods, landslides, and avalanches frequently disrupt daily life, bringing not only physical damage but deep social, economic, and psychological crises. For instance a total of 53 people lost their lives in the rain-induced disasters that occurred early October 2025. While disaster dramatically changes societies and day-to-day-life, a resilience mindset offers the capacity to withstand, adapt, and recover from these challenges.


Disaster Resilience is a mitigation strategy to minimize possible risk of disaster; it is the capacity of a system, community, or society to withstand, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, change, and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and effective way. Disaster Resilience actions include the preservation and restoration of fundamental structures and functions through risk management (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) 2017).


Local Government or "Local level" refers to the rural municipality, and the term denotes the political subdivisions known locally as a “District Assembly” (Local Government Operation Act, 2017). It is an authority that makes decisions or chooses certain actions within a certain geographical zone. A city, town, county, or state is an example of a small geographic area that is administered by its district assembly. Local governments usually only have authority over their own geographic area; they are unable to enact or execute laws that would have an impact on a larger region (Thapa, 2020). In Nepal, the Ministry of Home Affairs and its partner have invested greatly in bringing a major shift in disaster risk reduction and management. One of the greatest successes in institutionalizing disaster risk reduction and management governance in Nepal is the formation of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) within the country's new federal structure.


The Nepalese Constitution and the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2017 serve as the primary governing documents for disaster management in Nepal. The Constitution of Nepal has kept the DRM as a top priority across all the levels of the government. The schedule 7, 8 and 9 has stated that all the levels of government share the equal responsibilities for DRM. However, the district assembly (Local Government) has the primary responsibility in implementing and managing disaster-related activities at the community level. The district assembly has greater access to populations at risk and indigenous knowledge. Additionally, the Local Government Operation Act, of 2017's Section 11(2) grants the ability to the Local Government to create its own disaster management laws, policies, and recommendations. As a result, when it comes to catastrophe management, local levels should come first. Targets for local government readiness for disaster management are also defined by International DRRM commitments, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (Subedi, 2023).


Local level existing capacity enables it to implement effective disaster risk reduction and management strategies with the establishment of administrative frameworks, logistical systems, and action plans (Hayes et al., 2020). Additionally, it helps to loosen the knot of capacity building when disaster response training and curriculum are made mandatory in all government-run training programs for local authorities. Nepal requires an effective local-level disaster response framework; local authorities’ capacities for disaster response must be adequately strengthened to achieve this goal. However, it is up to elected officials and the next generation of climate resilience professionals to revitalize and resuscitate the nation's entire disaster response capacity building process.


Challenges For Local Government in Strengthening Resilience

  • A local response system is the most important component of decentralization in disaster management, since disaster management is essentially a bottom-up process. In order to handle responses during a disaster, the community and local government must move swiftly. However, local first responders frequently lack the tools required to plan ahead and oversee catastrophe response. (Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), 2024)


  • In the context of Nepal, several issues were identified with the centralized Human resources and logistics that had an impact on the entire nation. The dangerous roads and destroyed infrastructure in the mountainous areas made it difficult to reach some recipients. Almost no air transportation was possible because of bad weather and a shortage of helicopters (Baharmand et al., 2016).


  • In prior years, emergency response was the primary focus of disaster risk management; however, this method was a "wait and see" strategy with impromptu responses to offer rescue and assistance (Gadal & Oxfam, n.d.). 


  • The root of the issue is the government's failure to attempt to improve its capabilities and excessive reliance on foreign assistance for the capacity-building process (Malla et al., 2020).


  • Lack of disaster-specific strategies and the local government's reliance on NGOs and INGOs for capacity building and training (as cited in Pal et al., 2019). 



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About the Author:






Aayusha GC is a final-year Social Work student at St. Xavier’s College. She is passionate about learning through new initiatives and exploring new possibilities in life. Aayusha believes the RYN Fellowship will empower her to turn her environmental concerns into purposeful action.

References

  1. Baharmand, H., Boersma, F., Meesters, K., Mulder, F., & Wolbers, J. (2016). A multidisciplinary perspective on supporting community disaster resilience in Nepal. Resilience: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. https://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/iscram/iscram2016.html#BaharmandBMMW16

  2. Gadal, B. & Oxfam. (n.d.). EFFORTS OF NEPAL TOWARDS BUILDING a DISASTER RESILIENT COUNTRY. https://dpnet.org.np/uploads/files/efforts_of_nepal_towards_building_a_disaster_resilient_country%202019-04-08%2008-53-17.pdf

  3. Hayes, P., Regmi, B., Neupane, S., Bhandari, D., & Marker, P. (2020). Disaster Risk Reduction and Management in Nepal: Delineation of roles and responsibilities. In Oxford Policy Management. http://repo.floodalliance.net/jspui/handle/44111/3722

  4. Malla, S. B., Dahal, R. K., & Hasegawa, S. (2020). Analyzing the disaster response competency of the local government official and the elected representative in Nepal. Geoenvironmental Disasters, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40677-020-00153

  5. Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA). (2024). Nepal Disaster Report; Focus on Reconstruction and Resilience. Ministry of Home Affairs.

  6. Pal, I., Von Meding, J., Shrestha, S., Ahmed, I., & Gajendran, T. (2019). An interdisciplinary approach for disaster resilience and sustainability. In Disaster risk reduction. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9527-8

  7. Subedi, S. (2023, 08 04). Enable Local Levels to Manage Disasters. The Rising Nepal. https://risingnepaldaily.com/news/30419

  8. Thapa, I. (2020). Local Government: Concept, Roles and Importance for Contemporary Society.

  9. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).2017. (2017). The Sendai Framework Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction. https://www.undrr.org/terminology/resilience

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