It has been more than a month since a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit central Nepal on April 25. What happened next?
Having experienced a real threat of death, many survivors manifested avoidance (“I don’t want to talk about it!”), hyper-vigilance (“What’s that noise? Is the ground moving?”), intrusive thoughts (“What if the next big one may come while I’m asleep …?”) classic stress reactions (as reported by World Bank staff).
Nepal is home to the world's highest mountain and is wedged between two growing economic superpowers, but it is one of the poorest countries in the world. Now it is struggling to cope with the worst earthquake to hit the Himalayan nation in 80 years. On April 25, a devastating earthquake measuring 7.8 struck Nepal. Its epicentre was near Lamjung, 81 kilometers northwest of Kathmandu. Though an earthquake prone country, Nepal had not suffered an earthquake of this magnitude for 80 years. ?More than 8,000 dead, countless injured and nearly half a million displaced. And the full extent of the damage is yet to be known. Since then, there have been more than 300 aftershocks, yet the Nepal Planning Commission was able to present a credible ‘Post Disaster Needs Assessment’ document by analysing the damage and estimating the resources needed to get the economy back on track.
This is a colossal loss for an impoverished country at a time when focus was on attracting investments to put Nepal on a path of high and sustained economic growth. According to UNDP (2009) Nepal is the 11th most earthquake-prone country in the world as fourteen out of Nepal’s 75 districts have been declared “crisis hit”. The destruction was widespread covering residential and government buildings, heritage sites, schools and health posts, rural roads, bridges, water supply systems, agricultural land, trekking routes, hydropower plants and sports facilities.
Social sector has larger disaster effects compared to productive sectors and infrastructure sectors. The disadvantaged social groups in the poorer districts have suffered the largest damage and loss. The majority of the agricultural and informal sector workers are female due to the low capital entry requirement of the informal sector and lack of livelihood options. The widespread loss of food stocks, potential loss in crop productivity and loss of livestock as well as small scale enterprises has likely caused a severe income shock for women who rely on this sector.
Following the Nepal disaster, the fear of children and women falling prey to the human trafficker gangs has increased manifold. Children in earthquake-hit Nepal are more at risk of trafficking and exploitation or of being sent unnecessarily or illegally to live in orphanages since the first quake struck. According to reuters Nepal banned children under 16 from travelling without parents or approved guardians in an unprecedented move to deter human traffickers, and suspended international adoption to prevent children with living parents from being adopted. This shows Nepal worsening living conditions after the quake.
Reconstruction seems to be a major challenge for a disaster of this magnitude. Various international search and rescue teams have extended help by providing food supplies to hundreds of families in need, but a plan for providing suitable housing to families before monsoons, infrastructure redevelopment and economic stability needs to be developed by the government of Nepal. People need help to rebuild and resume their normal lives. With the monsoon season beginning in six weeks, landsides and flooding could further complicate the recovery efforts and deteriorate the living conditions in an already impoverished nation.
Having said that for all the destruction that natural disasters in recent history have caused, and for all the attention that they have gained in the public eye, they ultimately have had a negligible impact on the global economy. In a global and interconnected world, the ever-present concern is that disasters might impact countries other than those directly affected, for example neighbors or trading partners. But global financial markets have proven resilient to earthquake shocks and other natural disasters. The recent earthquakes in Nepal stand in contrast with the March 11, 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the resulting Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that affected the third largest economy in the world. It hit the home of auto and semiconductor manufacturing, destroying factories, disrupting the supply of raw materials and causing power shortages across the country. Were there ripple effects for the rest of the world? Did other economies feel the impacts of the disaster? Some economic sectors certainly did. If the global economic impact of the disaster in Japan was not large on aggregate, the global impact of the Nepali earthquakes will be negligible. Nepal’s main exports to the rest of the world are textiles. Its GDP is less than one percent of Japan’s, and it relies heavily on agriculture and on remittances from workers abroad. It is a tragedy. It is a symptom that the assistance that the world is providing now should have arrived much earlier.
