Responding to landslide risk

 Event 

Resilience, resistance and recovery: Responding to landslide risk in post-earthquake Nepal

Part of the Hazard, Risk and Disaster (HRD) Research Lecture Series 2021-22.

The 2015 Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal triggered more than 22,000 landslides, the equivalent of more than 200 years of ‘normal’ landsliding. The earthquake fundamentally changed the physical landscape in Central-West Nepal: some land was destroyed, some was rendered uninhabitable, and in some locations the risk of future landslides was unknown and even unknowable. The Government of Nepal undertook a Geohazards Assessment which resulted in around 250 settlements being classified as ‘high-risk’, with an associated recommendation for relocation. Drawing on findings from a DfID/NERC-funded Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR) project on earthquake-triggered landslides, Dr Katie Oven will provide a critical overview of landslide risk management policy and practice in post-earthquake Nepal, focusing in particular on the Geohazards Assessment. Katie grounds these findings in research undertaken in two ‘high-risk’ settlements in Sindhupalchok District, highlighting how the ‘recommendation’ for relocation was understood, managed and in some cases resisted as residents sought to define their own future in a dynamic and changing landscape.

About the speaker

Katie Oven is a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Fellow in Human Geography, Policy and Development in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at Northumbria University. Her research interests include natural hazards, disasters and development, with a particular focus on South and more recently Central Asia. Katie is a co-investigator on the GCRF-funded Sajag-Nepal Project: Preparedness and Planning for the Mountain Hazard and Risk Chain, where she co-leads work package 1 which explores disaster risk in the context of wider social, political and economic change.