Spatiotemporal trend and future risks of climatic disaster impacts in Nepal
Human death and economic losses due to climatic disasters are increasing globally and the impacts relative to the country's economy are higher in low-income countries. Yet, the spatiotemporal trend and the cause thereof are still poorly understood. Several studies argue that the increase in impacts so far is due to the growth in population and wealth exposed to the hazards, and the role of climate change is not evident. Others observed a decreasing vulnerability, potentially due to economic growth, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation, which could have counter-balanced the effect of climate change. Importantly, the current findings are mostly from cross-country studies or developed countries. Low-income countries like Nepal are poorly represented in existing analysis, and in particular, there is a lack of information at the local scale.
This study will at first map the high risk and vulnerable areas to climatic disaster in Nepal and provide new insights for DRR and adaptation planning and monitoring. Disaster losses normalized by the exposure at local scale will be estimated as a proxy of vulnerability. Secondly, it will study the attribution of observed climatic disaster impacts to indicators of climatic hazards, exposure, vulnerability and DRR and adaptation. Finally, this study will estimate future risks of climatic disaster impacts in different future scenarios. Regional Climate Models (RCMs) based climate indicators scenarios in combination with socioeconomic scenarios will be used to estimate the risks of losses in Karnali river basin in short and (2030) and mid-term (2050) future.