20. Earthquake Mitigation and Its Effect on Eco-environment and Social Development: A Case Study from Tamakoshi River Basin of Central Mountain Region, Nepal

Earthquakes are very unpredictable incidents and suddenly on April 25, 2015, the ground at Kathmandu shook so violently that they were once more reminded of the terrible earthquake (1934) of the past. It was later followed by an almost equally violent earthquake (7.3 Richter Scale) on May 12, 2015. The epicenter of May 12 was on Sunkhani, 3 km aerial distance (12 km road distance) from Charikot, district headquarter of Dolakha. Most of the structures of the area which had withstood first quake with some crack were razed entirely to the ground by the second quake. The present paper tries to describe the earthquake impacts along with mitigation measures adopted by government. The study is based on the field observation of the study area from June 26 to July 3 and September 17 to October 3, 2015, mainly through Key Informant Interview (KII), expert opinion, and literature review. In total, 70 and 95% of houses of urban and rural settlements, respectively, were damaged completely. Similarly, out of total 40 observed locations about 50% have totally damaged. The present study found that more damages occurred at the northern upper part than the southern part. The earthquake bought about significant number of ecological consequences such as triggering a number of dry landslides, and disturbances of wild life habitat causing increasing number of wild animal raids at the human settlements. The social development got more vulnerable specially on livelihood of basin people.