Sajag-Nepal

Sajag-Nepal is a partnership to improve preparedness for the mountain hazard chain in Nepal.

The Sajag-Nepal research project is funded by the UK Government through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and brings together academic, practitioner, humanitarian, and government organisations to make a difference to the ways in which residents, government, and the international community take decisions to manage these hazards and their associated risks. The project has been designed to make a significant difference to the ways in which residents, government, and the international community take decisions to manage multi-hazards and system risks. The research is:

Thinking critically about the social, political, economic, and environmental context within which disasters occur in Nepal;
Establishing a new approach to national- and provincial-scale planning for complex multi-hazard events, including those triggered by earthquakes and monsoons;
Developing interdisciplinary science to anticipate and communicate the range of hazards that occur during the annual monsoon; and
Find the best ways to utilise local knowledge and interdisciplinary science to inform how to prepare for and respond to multi-hazard disasters.

Sajag-Nepal has been designed from the outset to benefit a wide range of partner organisations in Nepal, and to deliver impact from the research. The primary goal is to positively impact residents living with systemic risk. The team is working to better understand the socio-political and economic processes that affect people’s everyday lives and through which systemic risk is produced and in which multi-hazards are experienced. The work will implore those tasked with managing risk to focus on the everyday needs of residents, and ensure that efforts to reduce risk are placed within the appropriate physical and socio-political contexts. The project is also working to enable local government to support residents to collectively manage their own risk by building on their own knowledge and providing new knowledge to support planning, forecasting, and messaging. And the team is providing innovative means of messaging, using locally produced radio programmes, to exploit the project's new interdisciplinary science to improve decision-making, working with local people and local government to make this as effective as possible.

At the same time, the project is supporting the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office and Humanitarian Country Team, who work with the Government of Nepal and major aid organisations in the country, to ground their earthquake and monsoon disaster preparedness plans in the best available interdisciplinary science. The team is also working with the RCO and HCT to build greater awareness of the socio-political context in which their planning sits, allowing them to evaluate variations in risk caused by changing hazard as well as changing population exposure and vulnerability. The project also works directly with the Government of Nepal through the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, supporting the development of the Bipad portal as a primary source of multi-hazard and risk information in Nepal and building capacity to understand earthquake- and monsoon-related hazards at a national scale.

Finally, the project is helping to develop the next generation of hazard and risk specialists in Nepal by supporting 10 early-career researchers based at NSET, the Social Science Baha, and Tribhuvan University. The project is delivering skills training and professional development for these researchers to provide the foundations for the future leaders of this sphere of work in Nepal.

Project partners:

You can find out more about the research and access all resources by visiting the project's dedicated website. In case of any questions, please contact Dr Katie Oven.