Title: Understanding transboundary impacts of multi-hazard early warning systems and their cultural context

Understanding transboundary impacts of multi-hazard early warning systems and their cultural context encompass a wide set of policy challenges and policy clashes, many of which are entrenched and seemingly intractable.  Transboundary multi-hazards are often characterized as a “Wicked Problem”, which suggests that these problems evolve from wide range of geo-political, social environmental roots and simple linear understanding and technical solutions are not enough. Not only the “answers” to these wicked problems are complex but also the “question” itself is complex because it is hard to define and portray the full nature of these problems.

In this research, I would like to simplify the understanding of the wickedness of the problem through four dimensions of theoretical engagements. My first theoretical engagement would be on understanding the transboundary context through the discourses on geopolitics and international relations. Secondly, I would like to engage on the disaster risk governance structure between Nepal and India. Thirdly, I would like to explore the multi-hazard dimension of a risk where hazard transforms and cascades affecting the different functions of the society and becomes disaster. And finally, I would engage into the four components (Risk Knowledge, Monitoring and Warning, Dissemination and Communication and Response capacity) of the early warning system of hydro-meteorological disasters and if the current methodology is flexible enough to adapt to the local understanding and has space for public participation in decision making regarding the early warning system of the hazards. And finally, I would explore how cultural biases affect the perception of risk in community for establishing transboundary early warning systems.

Authors (Grove, 2010, 2013, 2014; Kelman, 2006; Giroux, 2007, Donovan 2017) argue that, power and geopolitics are important aspects of disasters and geopolitical institutions, key actors, link between the intra and international institutions, scientists all can affect the disasters and these links are nonlinear and variable over space time and characterized by reverberations of knowledge and power through topologies of actors, objects and ideas (Donovan 2017). In Nepal and India, there is a lack of understanding on how the inter and intragovernmental institutions function in the transboundary multi-hazard context, and if there is an early warning system how the communities and the individuals living in these risk-prone areas respond and react to these early warning messages. I am keen to evaluate the power relationships between the Indian government and Nepal, through the Mitchel Foucault’s theories of Governmentality while assessing the transboundary treaties between Nepal and India related to water sharing and infrastructure development projects. Also, it would be interesting to observe if there is any space left in decision making for the affected communities and local institutions during these international negotiations. This will provide an understanding how states function during the transboundary disasters and how communities respond to those disasters.

Hazards and disasters encompasses the jurisdiction of multiple disciplines and authorities in Nepal and India, which have often overlapping in nature. These overlaps and gaps leads to the confusion and act as a bottleneck during the interagency coordination as well as coordinating in transnational level during a disaster event. I intend to have a holistic approach to understand disaster as not just a socio-physical event but as a complex process, which involves interactions and interrelations of wide range of actors and involves their interpretation of knowledge about the environment and the affected or vulnerable community.   And in doing so, I would assess the disaster and disaster risk reduction through assemblage theories and governmentality perspectives. An assemblage is a conglomerate of heterogenous components that may be multiscale and the components of assemblage may be also components of other assemblages, where the interactions between the components can be difficult to assess or quantify thus incorporating complexity and non-linearity. Transboundary disasters can be viewed as assemblages, where they incorporate international affairs, power dynamics, institutional networks, physical, social and environmental factors and exhibit unpredictable and nonlinear nature. The assemblage theory allows a subtle approach that can focus disaster risk reduction around its inherently transdisciplinary context (Donovan 2017). Disaster are assemblages of institutional practices, communities, institutions, technologies and complex power dynamics, when human systems and environment system interact. Disaster involve complicated interactions between humans and nature, while governance is crucial in assembling of disaster, which is related through the flows of power and knowledge within it as it interacts with nature and interpretations of nature (Pelling and Dill, 2010, Donovan 2017). Donovan (2017) argues that, while dealing with disasters as assemblages, focus shifts to the nexus between the human and environmental interactions, and incorporates perception of disaster and recognizes that values and cultural factors are important not only for the local knowledge but also for the scientific knowledge and provokes deeper understanding in which these connections affect in space and time, which could enrich the disaster risk reduction attempts.

In most of the disaster-prone areas of Nepal and India, poverty and limited livelihood options intertwined with subsistence economy are the strongest driving forces and people are constantly concerned with meeting their daily food supplies for their family more than anything else. These vulnerable communities have knowingly or unknowingly accepted to live with the risk because of limited livelihood options related to their land. In such situation how, the establishment of early warning system affect the communities and how their cultural upbringing affects the risk perception and risk communication mechanism? This is the unexplored part in the literature but very essential to the establishment of the early warning systems in the transboundary context and this research intends to enhance the understanding on this regard.

Introduction:

Environmental hazards do not respect the international boundaries (Keith 2013). Mirumachi and Chan (2014) argued that the disasters have become increasingly transboundary in nature and international transboundary river basins continue to gather the attention of the policymakers and researchers pertaining to its complexities intertwined with climate change and uncertainty. UN Water (2008) reports that there are approximately shared 145 rivers worldwide and 40% of the global population is depended on these shared river resources, but due to the climate change, many of the shared river basins suffer from increased poverty and impacts of hazards such as flood, landslides, and drought (Shepherd et al., 2013). Luo (2015) suggests that approximately 21 million people worldwide are affected by the floods each year on average and the number could increase up to 54 million in 2030 due to the impacts of climate change and socio-economic development. Also, the top 15 countries vulnerable to the flood account for nearly 80 percent of the total affected population worldwide, which are from the least developed and developing countries, vulnerable to multiple hazards and impact of climate change.

The recent hydro-meteorological disasters are strong reminder that disasters and their impacts are not contained within the national boundaries and narrowly focused standalone risk governance structures often fail during concatenated and cascading disasters, for which recent South Asian flood can be taken as an example, which affected altogether 45 million people living in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Review of Literature:

Transboundary disasters:

Transboundary disasters refers to the disasters which are not contained in a specific state or national boundaries and have widespread impacts affecting different dimensions of societies. Often transboundary disasters are systemic in nature and due to the narrowed focus while studying these disasters, they often appear in as “rude surprises” (LaPorte 2007) to the society and to the authorities who are responsible managing these disasters. Ansell et al. (2010) stated the transboundary nature of any crisis can be described in three dimensions of political boundary, functional boundary and time boundary. The transboundary disasters can transcend the political boundaries both vertically and horizontally. When the impact of disasters is extensive, requiring assistance from multiple hierarchies within a government structure, then these are referred to have the vertical dimensions of the transboundary activity, and when the crisis spreads horizontally across two or more political jurisdictions of a state or national boundary then the impact is said to have horizontal dimensions (Chisho