Building ex ante resilience of disaster-exposed mountain communities: Drawing insights from the Nepal earthquake recovery

Government and non-government development agencies are increasingly focusing on building resilience at community level, especially in their post-disaster recovery interventions. But operationalizing the concept of resilience is a methodological challenge. In the aftermath of the recent major earthquake in Nepal, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is working on developing a community resilience framework that will help identify policy-relevant factors contributing to building resilience. Using the method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), data from 30 earthquake-affected mountain communities has been analysed to identify the combinations of factors that may serve as necessary/sufficient 'conditions' for resilient 'recovery outcomes'. Results establish six factors - natural resource endowment, physical connectivity, access to external development services, entrepreneurship, social homogeneity, and local economy - combining according to the community context to give five different factor combinations. Importantly, factors that are individually insignificant are seen in combination with other factors to exercise significant influence on recovery outcomes. The study concludes by proposing to policymakers that it is possible to identify appropriate combinations of contextual factors and ex ante nourish these to build resilience.