Mahender Bahadur Karki and Raj Kumar Mahto enjoy immense respect among the villagers here for being the caretakers of a community-based flood warning system that can be successfully replicated along the banks of Bihar’s ‘river of sorrow’, the Kosi.
The Kosi Basin Programme of ICIMOD, together with the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology’s Community-Based Flood and Glacial Lake Outburst Risk Reduction Project, is currently piloting United Nations Development Programme-supported community-based flood early warning systems along Nepal’s Ratu Khola (rivulet) in an effort to give flood-prone communities the extra time that they need prior to a flash flood.