‘Time has come to rewrite the development model to deal with disasters’: Law Minister

Kathmandu. Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Sobita Gautam has said that the model of Nepal’s development should be rewritten so that it can withstand disasters by coming out of the traditional cycle of reconstruction after a disaster. Minister Gautam recalled the series of devastating disasters that the country has faced in the recent past and wrote that a new thinking is needed in the development and infrastructure construction.

Minister Gautam said that in the last 12-13 years, Nepal has had to face major disasters like Jure landslides, 2072 mega earthquake, Bhotekoshi and Melamchi floods, Jajarkot earthquake, Thame segre flow and recent devastating floods in Rasuwa. She said that due to these disasters, the infrastructure built for years and after seeking loans is destroyed in a few hours and the society is forced to start from scratch time and again.

“A family not only loses a home, it loses a lifetime of earnings. A community not only loses roads, but also loses access to education, health and the rest of the country,” he wrote.

He argued that although Nepal’s contribution to the world’s carbon emissions is very low, Nepali citizens have to pay the high price of climate change. She said that the climate crisis created by the world’s development and luxury has caused serious damage to the settlements, infrastructure and economy of countries like Nepal.

She stressed that now we should focus on ‘how to rebuild the damaged ones’ instead of thinking about ‘how to rebuild the damaged ones’. She said that the time has come to rise above the traditional thinking and think about safe land use, integrated and planned settlements, climate-friendly infrastructure and if necessary, planned rehabilitation.

He said that although we cannot stop the mountains, glaciers or global climate change alone, we should make efforts to make Nepal capable of dealing with it. Minister Gautam said that she has also raised this issue strongly in the Law Reform Committee.

“It is no longer enough to limit disaster and climate resilience to just one issue of law and policy. The government is clear that it should be made the basic principle of every development law, policy, plan and infrastructure development,” Minister Gautam wrote. She stressed that the way forward should not only be rebuilt after the disaster, but also the model of development should be changed so that it can withstand the disaster.