Vulnerability and Disaster Resilience at Household Level

Abstract

Many development practitioners, academicians, development institutions and organizations, are attempting to discover the characteristic of resilience in Nepal. The issue of disaster resilience got its prominence in Nepali scholarship after the 2015 earthquake. The people of Nepal today, are visible to perpetual disaster events and profound vulnerability to the disaster, which was already there. Disaster incidents are increasing day by day, due to natural hazards such as landslides, floods, and human-induced activities like road accidents, fire, etc. But these consequences are not merely natural events; they are social events as well. The deaths of people, injuries, and property damage are related to the social side of the disaster. Similarly, natural hazards such as earthquakes are also creating disasters because of vulnerability and the absence of disaster resilience in Nepalese people. Rising incidents of disaster vulnerability and resilience is increasing concern of the state, academia and local level, since Nepal is 4th and 11th vulnerable to the risk of climate change and earthquakes in the world. Apart from that, other chances of disaster are equally mounting, and the capacity to cope (Resilience), or coming back to usual conditions is not enough for surviving and moving forward.

This article tries to explore the relationship between vulnerability and disaster resilience, and the research questions of this article are, what types of vulnerability are creating the barrier for a resilient household and what are the attributes of a resilient family? Dhugin, Lamatar is the field for this research, and answers are dug out based on the Nepal earthquake 2015 as a major disaster of Nepal. Field data are collected after finalizing the purposive sampling. The interview method is used to take the depth information. Face-to-face interviews with informants remained the primary sources for data collection. And this research has been conducted using a qualitative method. My finding is: adopting capacity with the help of resources and assets and absorbing capacity by shifting occupation; after a disaster are the attributes of resilient households, whereas geographically vulnerability, exclusion, poverty remained barriers for resilient families.