A Case Study of Floods in Tinau River in Western Terai
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v CASE STUDY REPORT CCRI Case Study 6 Disaster Risk Management and Meso-Level Institutions in Nepal: A Case Study of Floods in Tinau River in Western Terai Hari Dhungana Adam Pain Sindhu P. Dhungana Case study report CCRI case study 6 Disaster Risk Management and Meso-Level Institutions in Nepal: A Case Study of Floods in Tinau River in Western Terai Suggested Citation: Dhungana H., Pain A. and Dhungana S. 2016. Disaster Risk Management and Meso- Level Institutions in Nepal.A Case Study of Floods in Tinau River in Western Terai. Climate Change and Rural Institutions Research Project In Collaboration with: ii Copyright © 2016 Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) Published by SIAS, Kathmandu, Nepal Suggested Citation: Dhungana H., Pain A. and Dhungana S. 2016. Disaster Risk Management and Meso- Level Institutions in Nepal.A Case Study of Floods in Tinau River in Western Terai. The views expressed in this discussion paper are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SIAS Nepal. iii Contents Acronyms ...................................................................................................................................v Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... vi 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 2 Floods in Nepal Terai ........................................................................................................ 3 2.1 The Tinau River in context ........................................................................................ 3 2.2 The Tinau River and its watershed ............................................................................ 6 2.3 Water flow and rainfall ............................................................................................ 10 3 Flooding and its effects ................................................................................................... 12 3.1 Effect on Irrigation, Infrastructure and Agriculture ................................................ 21 3.2 Effect on human settlements and agriculture .......................................................... 22 3.3 Differential Experiences of floods and inundation: the case of Butwal informal settlements ........................................................................................................................... 24 4 Drivers of Flooding ......................................................................................................... 30 4.1 Development and urbanization ................................................................................ 31 4.2 Extraction of river materials .................................................................................... 32 4.3 Informal settlements ................................................................................................ 35 5 Response Activities: Institutional Arrangements and Contradictions ............................. 37 5.1 Past Interventions .................................................................................................... 38 5.2 Recent responses to floods in the Tinau .................................................................. 41 6 Analytical issues .............................................................................................................. 48 6.1 Absence of holistic watershed approach to mitigate flood risks ............................. 49 6.2 Lack of clear responsibility and accountability ....................................................... 49 6.3 Disconnect between institutions .............................................................................. 50 6.4 Construction and development work ....................................................................... 50 6.5 Approach to disaster support ................................................................................... 50 6.6 Bureaucratic fix of disaster planning ....................................................................... 50 7 References ....................................................................................................................... 51 Annexes Annex 1: List of Interviews and Group Discussions Conducted for the Study ....................... 54 Figures Figure 1: The boundary of Tinau watershed in its hills-only emphasis .................................... 8 Figure 2: NGO representation of Tinau watershed in the Terai portion.................................... 8 Figure 3: River system of Rupandehi district .......................................................................... 10 Tables Table 1: Flooding in Tinau and its effect in Butwal and Marchawar areas ............................. 15 Table 2: Crusher plants in Rupandehi ..................................................................................... 34 iv Acronyms DDC District Development Committee DDMC District Disaster Management Committee DDMP District Disaster Management Plan DDRC District Disaster Relief Committee DISCO District Soil Conservation Office DRM Disaster Risk Management DRR Disaster Risk Reduction DWIDP Department of Water Induced Disaster Prevention FNCCI Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries GON Government of Nepal IBWT Inter-basin water transfer LDRMP Local Disaster Risk Management Plan NRRC Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium NSDRM National Strategy for Disaster Risk Management PEP People’s Embankment Programme SATA Swiss Association for Technical Assistance TWP Tinau Watershed Project VDC Village Development Committee v Abstract Floods are one of the most important hazards in Nepal, and over the past four decades they have been the third largest source of disaster-related casualties in the country. Floods are a particularly recurring phenomenon in many rivers in the Terai region in the country’s southern frontier. This discussion paper examines flood events in one of the Terai rivers — the Tinau — of south- central Nepal in recent history and relates these events to the complex set of drivers and policies and programmatic approaches to reducing flood risks, including preparedness, response and recovery. In doing so, this paper looks at how and to what extent existing institutional actors around the river identify the flood risks and engage in addressing those risks and hazard events over time. On the basis of the Tinau case study, this paper draws wider implications for Nepal’s evolving institutional arrangement for disaster risk management, especially Nepal’s current policy approaches, the capacity and limitations of current institutional and legal systems, and their privileging of the particular framing of disasters vis-à-vis the interests of major actors that are at play. We argue that the Tinau river and flood hazards are intricately enmeshed into a political economy characterised by rapid migration, rapidly increasing and largely unplanned urbanization, growth of extractive industries including the collection of riverbed materials, and an agrarian change transitioning to adoption of more capital-intensive (mechanised) agriculture. Accordingly, first, we suggest that a narrow and regimented approach to understanding flood risks and response measures are ill-suited to flood risks that have multiple drivers and involve multiple and conflicting interests of river use. Secondly, while with the promulgation of National Strategy of Disaster Risk Management (NSDRM) effort is underway to decentralize disaster planning and implementation, the approach fails to effectively account for risks spread into the entire river watershed, leading to fragmented measures of risk reduction if any. Thirdly, the flood mitigation measures are conceived either as engineering solutions or tokenistic community measures, both of which fail to reduce risks and to effectively respond to and recover from floods when they happen. There is therefore a need to devising a coherent watershed-wide strategy for reducing flood risks and create a more competent, accountable and coordinated institutional mechanism to effectively handle disaster risk management. vi 1 Introduction For many nights during the rainy season, the locals in Sukumbasi basti (informal settlement) of Buddhanagar on the margins of the city of Butwal in south-central Nepal engage in a rotation system to watch whether the Tinau River will swell to endanger their lives and property. A number of men in these Sukumbasi households remain awake through the night and make sure that their families remain safe. Fear grows in these settlements as the monsoon clouds gather on the sky over the upstream areas of Rupandehi and the hill district of Palpa. When the river level reaches the dangerous level, these locals wake others, start packing their belongings and prepare to run away. The unpredictable and unruly river of Tinau and its branch Dano, which bifurcates west-southwards just below the Tinau bridge on the western side of Butwal bazaar, surround these settlements from the east and west. In 2011, the people in the Sukumbasi settlements witnessed 17 houses just across the Tinau River swept away within an hour. The story above reveals the complexity of flood disasters as well as the river economy in and around the Tinau River. The Tinau is a case of a medium-sized river in Nepal – originating in the mid-hills (Mahabharata lek)--which nurtures life and causes frequent flood damage in the