South Asia disaster report 2016

This edition of the South Asia Disaster Report concentrates on Build Back Better (BBB), highlighting new and alternative disaster management measures to improve resilience of vulnerable communities. It explores initiatives by citizens, the state and development practitioners in South Asian countries who have led the way in improving actions for rehabilitation and recovery in South Asia.

The case studies focusing on BBB cover the Earthquake in Nepal in 2015, the Meeriyabedda Landslide in Sri Lanka in 2014, the Uttarakhand Floods, Cyclone Phailin and Cyclone Hudhud in India in 2013, Cyclone Sidre and Aila in Bangladesh in 2007 and 2011, and the monsoon floods in Pakistan in 2012 and 2013. It also looks across the region at reducing risks to cultural heritage in South Asia.

The report further identifies challenges and opportunities: 

• Challenge of gaps and lack of coordination at all scales: regional, national and local
• Challenge of extreme poverty, marginalization and physical isolation
• Challenge of lack of continuity in citizen participation at local scale and difficulties in communicating the benefits of voluntary relocation and other ways of reducing risk
• Challenges of new risks produced by topdown approaches to recovery and to mega-projects that lack sufficient social and environmental impact analysis
• Opportunities to include community-based hazard warning systems as part of BBB
• Opportunities to reinforce people’s livelihoods with cash, insurance and in other
• Opportunities to focus on education and children’s well-being
• Opportunities to focus on women’s leadership role in BBB.