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3 - Expertise, Labour, and Mobility in Nepal's Post-Conflict, Post-Disaster Reconstruction: Law, Construction, and Finance as Domains of Social Transformation
- Edited by Michael Hutt, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Mark Liechty, University of Illinois, Stefanie Lotter, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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- Epicentre to Aftermath
- Published online:
- 08 July 2021
- Print publication:
- 05 August 2021, pp 49-86
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Summary
Introduction
How have people affected by Nepal's 2015 earthquakes experienced the reconstruction process on the ground? This chapter draws on ethnographic data collected during Nepal's post-earthquake reconstruction to inform theoretical questions about relationships between expertise, labour, and mobility in shaping post-disaster outcomes, including broader societal transformations. Based on a collaborative research project conducted between 2017 and 2020 in three of Nepal's earthquake-affected districts (Bhaktapur, Dhading, and Sindhupalchok), we point to legal, material, and financial processes that constitute lived experiences of reconstruction at the household level.
Since its inception in 2017, our project has explored the domains of law, construction, and finance to ask: How successful has Nepal's ‘owner-driven’ reconstruction model for households been at ensuring positive outcomes, on material, sociocultural, and subjective levels? How have domestic (that is, Nepali national) professionals, such as engineers, lawyers, and non-governmental organization (NGO) staff, served as mediators between earthquake-affected community members and institutional actors implementing reconstruction at the scale of local governance? How have relations of power and their material outcomes been negotiated? How have worldviews and practices been reshaped along the way? And how have fluctuating labour markets and conditions of high mobility shaped these interactions?
Such questions are important both for evaluating the often contradictory outcomes of reconstruction's multiple interventions and for examining the wider sociopolitical context of disaster and relief projects, such as Nepal's post-conflict process of state restructuring that devolved power to local governments in 2017. In this context, we suggest that political and material transformations—at local, regional, and national levels—must be understood as intersecting with each other, rather than as separate trajectories.
As detailed in the introduction to this volume (Liechty and Hutt), Nepal's earthquakes struck at a period of protracted political impasse which politicized and delayed the establishment of a central state agency to coordinate relief efforts by nearly seven months. The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) only unveiled its first ‘four-phase plan’ in January 2016, and it took another three months for the first housing grants to be released, not least because an entire infrastructure of relief coordination needed to be erected (The Kathmandu Post 2015b, 2016c)
First camera-trap record of the snow leopard Panthera uncia in Gaurishankar Conservation Area, Nepal
- Narayan Prasad Koju, Bijay Bashyal, Bishnu Prasad Pandey, Satya Narayan Shah, Shankar Thami, William V. Bleisch
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The snow leopard Panthera uncia is the flagship species of the high mountains of the Himalayas. There is potentially continuous habitat for the snow leopard along the northern border of Nepal, but there is a gap in information about the snow leopard in Gaurishankar Conservation Area. Previous spatial analysis has suggested that the Lamabagar area in this Conservation Area could serve as a transboundary corridor for snow leopards, and that the area may connect local populations, creating a metapopulation. However, there has been no visual confirmation of the species in Lamabagar. We set 11 infrared camera traps for 7 months in Lapchi Village of Gaurishankar Conservation Area, where blue sheep Pseudois nayaur, musk deer Moschus leucogaster and Himalayan tahr Hemitragus jemlahicus, all snow leopard prey species, had been observed. In November 2018 at 4,100 m, 5 km south-west of Lapchi Village, one camera recorded three images of a snow leopard, the first photographic evidence of the species in the Conservation Area. Sixteen other species of mammals were also recorded. Camera-trap records and sightings indicated a high abundance of Himalayan tahr, blue sheep and musk deer. Lapchi Village may be a potentially important corridor for snow leopard movement between the east and west of Nepal and northwards to Quomolongma National Park in China. However, plans for development in the region present increasing threats to this corridor. We recommend development of a transboundary conservation strategy for snow leopard conservation in this region, with participation of Nepal, China and international agencies.