Assessing the community-based disaster management practicesin Godawari municipality, Lalitpur, Nepal

Abstract

Disasters like floods and landslides are huge problem in Godawari municipality, but the perception of people about the risks are still under studied. This study aims to find the understanding of local communities about flood and landslide disaster, the traditional practices they use to manage those risks and the challenges they face to solve disaster related problems. A mixed-methods approach was used, where a household survey of 384 respondents from theeach wards along with interviews of ward chairpersons and municipal officials. The findings show that while people recognize flood and landslide as a serious community issue (mean score 3.67 out of 5), their perception of personal risk remains surprisingly moderate for both floods (2.87) and landslides (2.82). So basically, they think it's a problem but not really their problem. About 60% of people said they think these disasters are getting worse. Almost half the people (46%) said they use some kind of traditional method like building stone walls for, planting bamboo for, or taking care of community forests to cope with landslides and floods. However, only 15% are actually keeping up with these practices properly. Most people have either stopped or only do it sometimes now. But those who still do it say it is effective. The biggest problems people mentioned were that there's not enough awareness aboud DRRM (63.50%), the drainage systems have also been perceived as a problem (50%), road construction is making things worse (45%) and there's basically no early warning system that works (43%). Budget and lack of technical capacity were the main reasons that hindered their protection against these disasters. Different wards have different situation as some wards faces severe challenges compared to other wards where challenges are minimal.Ward 7 had the highest landslide exposure, while Wards 5 and 6 had the most floods. Ward 13 had the lowest trust in institutions and almost no early warning systems. Ward 12 was most worried about river encroachment. Overall, there is a gap between people's awareness of disaster risks and their actual preparedness and that traditional practices are being lost just when formal systems remain too weak to replace them. The findings suggest that disaster management in Godawari needs to be ward-specific or basin specific rather than treating it uniformly and that local knowledge should be formally recognized and supported before it disappears completely.