Indicator Based Vulnerability Assessment of Chhayanath-Rara Municipality, Western Nepal
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Environment and Natural Resources Journal 2020; 18(3): 224-233 Indicator Based Vulnerability Assessment of Chhayanath-Rara Municipality, Western Nepal Padam Bahadur Budha1*, Kabiraj Paudyal2, and Motilal Ghimire3 1Central Department of Environmental Science, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal 2Central Department of Geology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal 3Central Department of Geography, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Received: 29 Aug 2019 The dense settlements at the eastern hills of Rara Lake are at higher risk of Received in revised: 11 Feb 2020 existing landslides. Seepage of water from the lake has increased erosion rates, Accepted: 13 Feb 2020 exaggerating the threats to villages. People are worried due to the potential of Published online: 16 Mar 2020 inadvertent disaster, therefore it became necessary to estimate the vulnerability DOI: 10.32526/ennrj.18.3.2020.21 of the communities and inform concerned authorities. Setting this requirement Keywords: as an objective, underlying influencing indicators were assessed. The Landslides risk/ Vulnerability vulnerability assessment was based on the scoring of the responses emanated assessment/ Vulnerability indices/ from indicator-based household's survey. These scores were summed up to Socio-economic indicators generate indices and also mapped with their true locations. Vulnerability scores ranged from 16.50 to 21.75 and were categorized into five classes after * Corresponding author: standardization. A moderate vulnerability was exhibited by 33.08% of E-mail: [email protected] households sampled. High and very high categories of vulnerability occupied 18.80% and 4.51% of households, respectively. Field observation showed solitary households built away from village clusters were highly vulnerable. Most households showed moderate vulnerability and characteristics like stones/mud-built houses, firewood as a primary fuel, decreasing forests and grasslands, increasing temperatures, and decreasing rainfall were major influencing indicators for higher vulnerability in the research area. 1. INTRODUCTION institutional, governance, and environmental factors Vulnerability is conceptualized as complex- (Cardona et al., 2012). The strengths of the multidimensional, dynamic, time and space-specific communities as well as the external factors that are (Joseph, 2013). According to the definition provided crucial in shaping the capabilities of those by United Nations International Strategy for Disaster communities. The vulnerability can be related to the Reduction (UNISDR) the characteristics and susceptibility of the system in question to adverse circumstances of a community, system or asset that consequences following hazard impact and the value make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a placed on the system by society (Tapsell et al., 2010). hazard (UNISDR, 2009) give rise to vulnerability Considering this definition the inclusion of the condition. This definition encompasses the two sides economic status of the individuals or communities is of vulnerability. First, the external side of risk, shock a must in vulnerability estimation. Vulnerability to or stress to which individuals or households are environmental hazards means the potential for loss subject to; and other is the internal side which is (Cutter et al., 2003). In the disaster risk management defenselessness, means lack of coping without discourse, the need for a paradigm shift from damaging loss (Haki et al., 2004). Therefore it is vital quantification and analysis of hazard to identification, to incorporate both the components in vulnerability assessment, and ranking of vulnerability has taken assessments and consider the social system along with center-stage (Joseph, 2013). Thus, at present times it environmental changes. Vulnerability depends on is a must to assess the vulnerability to quantify the risk economic, social, geographic, demographic, cultural, of a particular hazard. Such assessments in Citation: Budha PB, Paudyal K, Ghimire M. Indicator based vulnerability assessment of Chhayanath-Rara Municipality, Western Nepal. Environ. Nat. Resour. J. 2020;18(3):224-233. DOI: 10.32526/ennrj.18.3.2020.21 Budha PB et al. / Environment and Natural Resources Journal 2020; 18(3): 224-233 225 mountainous countries like Nepal, where multi- major problem (Budha et al., 2016). Also, the district hazards are prevalent, would be crucial for disaster is one of the remote areas of Nepal. The major management. objective to assess the vulnerability status of Nepal is prone to disasters due to the number of households and find the extent of influence by factors, both natural and human-induced, including particular causative factors as household or indi- adverse geo-climatic conditions, topographic vidual is distinguished as the first level of social features, environmental degradation, population vulnerability (Dwyer et al., 2004) in the spatial scale growth, development practices that are not of analysis. The inference drawn will provide the sustainable, etc. When the database of the Ministry of differences in results of national and local scale Home Affairs (MoHA) of Government of Nepal vulnerability assessment. (GoN) from 1971 till 2016 was reviewed, it revealed landslides and floods among the top five hazards and 2. METHODOLOGY are annual in nature unlike earthquakes (MoHA, 2.1 Study area 2018). The database of landslides (August 1993 to The study area for this research is located in the May 2002) of different countries for casualties and Mugu District of western Nepal at the longitude of damage, by (Alexander, 2004), ranked Nepal as 12th 82o6’E to 82o12’E and latitude of 29o30’N to considering only 4 events causing 203 deaths. 29o35’N. It included households from 10 villages of The report prepared by the Ministry of Chhayanath-Rara Municipality as shown in Figure 1. Environment (MoE) regarding vulnerability of Most part of the experimental site makes the buffer climate change identified the Mugu District, where zone of the Rara National Park. The study area the study area is located, among very high vulnerable comprised of uneven terrain and steep east-facing districts in Nepal (MoE, 2010). Also, the same study slopes with gradient ranged from 0o to 72o. It had an found that the district Mugu is very low in socio- elevation difference from 1,622 m to 3,460 m. economic and technologic adaptation capability, and Mugu Karnali River formed the border of the in infrastructure adaptation capability. This means the study area at the Northern edge as shown in Figure 1. district has the least adaptive capacity in Nepal which The River is snow-fed and a major tributary of the has an inverse relation with vulnerability. Mugu Karnali River. Gumgadh River flowed in the Eastern District was ranked 66th out of 75 districts in the part. Rara Lake is situated on the Western border. human development index with the score of 0.397 Here most water bodies, even small streams, were and 5th district in the human poverty index with a perennial. Minor gullies and streams become highly score of 45.22 (Sharma et al., 2014). These figures destructive in monsoon periods, due to steep from government and non-governmental institutions gradients, making landslides a recurrent phenomenon made it clear that there is a requirement of research at (Budha et al., 2016). the grassroots level. Similarly, a social vulnerability analysis done by Aksha et al. (2019) showed that the 2.2 Indicator selection district having moderate to high vulnerability The flow chart shown in Figure 2 represents the contrasting to high vulnerability estimated by Gautam different stages in the vulnerability assessment of this (2017). These two scientific pieces of research were research. The first stage was to select indicators based carried out at the national scale so there is a need to on works of literature available. As vulnerability find out what is the actual scenario at a local scale. cannot be determined by a single factor, combinations Further, Aksha et al. (2019) insist that the drivers of of many indicators were considered for study (Dwyer vulnerability may vary at component and local scale et al., 2004). Indicators of social vulnerability for which made the necessity to produce the local level individual/household level were selected based on a vulnerability estimates and for particular hazards. The literature review (Armas and Gavris, 2013; Cutter et local level vulnerability assessment could find what al., 2003; Devkota et al., 2013; Dwyer et al., 2004; would be the level of vulnerability for each household Ebert and Kerle, 2008; Tesso et al., 2012) and and/or individual peoples. Besides, such local-level acknowledging the local conditions. 36 indicators analysis can find the major driving factors behind the selected for this study are listed into four major high vulnerability of each household. Thus, this indicators as Social, Economic, Environmental and research was carried out in the headquarter of the Institutional as shown in Table 2. This selection of Mugu District where landslide hazard is one of a indicators was based on the list of generally accepted Budha PB et al. / Environment and Natural Resources Journal 2020; 18(3): 224-233 226 Figure 1. Location of the study area criteria with considerations of data availability and hazard assessments were referred. The questionnaire quality, simplicity, quantitative, sensitivity (Dwyer et was then scheduled for the household interview and al., 2004) and response. data was