Earthquakes or tiger attacks: understanding what people fear most can help prevent disasters

Residents also worried about changes to municipal boundaries that will affect their access to government services. Administrative changes in the city have led to a reallocation of funding from rapidly urbanising areas to the rural parts of the city, which lack the most basic infrastructure (electricity and paved roads).

What’s more, the local authority is raising taxes in 2019, which leaves those with very little money struggling to pay for services that were free before, on top of feeding their families and paying for school uniforms.

Yet policy makers and government officials at all levels ignore or discount residents’ fears about wild animal attacks, reallocation of municipal funding and the prospect of increasing taxes, when deciding what risks to address in their cities. Local authorities are more focused on paving roads throughout the city – a visible improvement which shows they are “doing something” – rather than addressing the full continuum of urban risk.

It’s important to note that there is nothing natural about disasters. Natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions happen frequently around the world. But disasters only occur when people are left exposed and vulnerable to natural hazards – which should be mitigated through safer building, better planning and preparation.

By ignoring residents’ everyday fears, governments risk losing their trust, which could increase the risk of disaster as residents disengage from government initiatives aimed at mitigating natural hazards.

Listen and learn
In a new paper, due to be published as part of the 2019 United Nations’ global assessment report for disaster risk reduction, I explain why it’s crucial to listen and include the views of residents and local authorities when national governments, donors and United Nations agencies think about how to manage risk in cities.

Local authorities are on the front line and are increasingly responsible for managing the full range of urban risks and hazards – from the economic precarity that forces young Nepali men to work abroad, to environmental degradation including lack of sewage treatment and rapid urbanization which leads to fertile agricultural land being built on. And the list continues.

Recognizing this wider range of risks is important for global conversations taking place between national governments and United Nations organizations. How these leaders define risk can decide how governments act on an international, national and even municipal level.

What’s more, if local people’s perceptions of risk are not included in national policy decisions, this shapes and actually limits what risks are actually managed locally. This leads to people’s worries being left ignored and unaddressed – and they become disenchanted and disengaged.

According to the United Nations, we are now living in an urban world, so we should all make the effort to better understand the complexity of challenges facing cities, and the continuum of risks in Nepal and all the other fast-urbanizing places in the world. This includes listening to cities’ residents.

Hanna Ruszczyk is Assistant Professor, Durham University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.