Draft Integrated Urban Recovery Strategies Vol I: Main Report

The 2015 Gorkha earthquake of 25th April and the massive aftershocks brought a heavy loss to life and property. The 2015 Gorkha earthquake resulted in a loss of more than 8,000 lives and damaged around 500,000 private houses (PDRF, 2016). Rural areas were damaged more as compared to the urban areas due to the inferior construction quality. However, the reconstruction of urban areas stayed a challenge. The earthquake- affected 757 urban wards and 1796 rural wards across the urban and rural municipalities in the 32 earthquake-affected districts of the country. Around 40% of total housing damage from the earthquake were in urban areas (UEHRR, 2021).

After the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, Government of Nepal transferred the responsibility of reconstruction and recovery to National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). As the NRA has been phased out in December 2021, it is important to embed the NRA's lessons in the generic line agencies such as the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), NDRRMA and local governments. Hence, the main aim of this Integrated Urban Recovery Strategy is to organize learnings from the ongoing recovery efforts and prepare ground for integrating evidence-based urban strategies into specific government acts, policies, working procedures and regulations.

The document focused on the following aspects:

• Identify and analyze the urban issues and challenges through available evidence and reports. 
• Organize advocacy meetings and dissemination Workshops with key government (MoUD, MoFAGA, NDRRMA, DUDBC, KVDA, Provincial and local government officials, etc.) and urban stakeholders for the enhancement of the propositions.
• Review draft proposed amendments to the existing Acts, Policies, Regulations and Working Procedures.
• Recommend the way forward towards integrating recommendations in relevant government legal and operational documents like the urban policies, heritage policies, etc.