For Environment, Democracy and Livelihoods
The Production of Landslides Risks and Local Responses: A Case Study of Bhirkot, Dolakha District of Nepal.
A landslide that caused no deaths and covered a relatively small area might be seen as scarcely significant and hardly worthy of attention in relation to disaster risk management. Indeed the case made in the National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA)3 to climate risk (GoN, 2010)4 that positioned Dolakha as one of Nepal’s most vulnerable districts to climate induced disaster, focussed more on the relative threat of a glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF) from Tso Rolpa5 rather than the disaster risk posed by landslides. But the available and somewhat incomplete evidence on landslides at a national level suggests that landslides constitute a significant proportion of the disaster events recorded each year. In the period between February and December 2012, for example one source6 reported that of the 46 disaster events recorded within Nepal, 11 (23.9%) were due to landslides while another 14 (30%) were due to floods. Seven of the landslide events led to a total of 35 deaths which comprised over 53% of all deaths due to disaster in this period. In contrast floods caused no deaths but led to 630 people being displaced….
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