Scaling Social Protection in Nepal: From hypotheses to reality

In August 2017, Nepal experienced heavy and continuous rainfall that led to extensive flooding in 35 of the country’s 77 districts, with 18 severely affected (NPC, 2017). The flood was active from 11–14 August and affected 14,060 families, resulting in 161 deaths, 17 injuries and 22 missing persons (Bhandari et al,. 2018; MoHA, 2019). In addition to the human impacts, the housing, agriculture and livestock sectors all sustained damages of 187.9 million US dollars, 69.5 million US dollars and 102.7 million US dollars, respectively (NPC, 2017). This specific flood incident was the result of a monsoon trough2 that released heavy rain across the country’s eastern and western districts leading to large-scale loss of life, displacement, damaged infrastructure and destroyed livelihoods (NPC, 2017). Many district informants anecdotally concluded that this event was the heaviest rainfall experienced in over 60 years (NPC, 2017).

The response measures implemented for this flood did not use the core SP programmes available in Nepal and the application of SP support programmes – such as healthcare, education and agricultural support – was limited in impact (Holmes et al., 2019). However, there is increasing evidence of the impactful role of SP for climate risk management (CRM) and to support loss and damage remedial action at the national level (Aleksandrova et al., 2021).

This brief will explore the existing SP system in Nepal and hypothesise how it could have been scaled up to address the impacts of the 2017 flood. The exercise is designed to be illustrative of the opportunities to use these systems to manage climate risk and does not intend to comment on or review the actual 2017 flood responses undertaken. In doing so, entry points to making the SP system more climate adaptive in Nepal will be identified and its potential use in future floods will be examined.