Local Government Need Capacity Development Support for Integrating Climate Change and Disaster into Local Development

After transferring unitary government into federal government, the dynamism of power and interest of local stakeholders has changed considerably. Prosperity has become a prime agenda of development at local level after having elections at local and provincial level. A few local government units have started formulating rules and regulations towards economic directions. Local government leaders are not well aware on their roles and responsibilities in the changing political context. Even, they should be well educated in climate and disaster proofed infrastructure development.

Power and interest of key stakeholders at local level has been changed after local election in late 2017 and early 2018. The noticeable changed includes, i) All party mechanism for decision making to single ruling party decision making process, ii) District Development Committee designated primarily to plan and implement infrastructure development activities to District Coordination Committees responsible primarily for coordination and monitoring of development activities under their jurisdiction, iii) Local Development Officer with the role of decision making and execution of DDC approved activities to  District Coordination Officer with confined roles of coordination and facilitating implementation of DCC decisions, and iv) Village Development Committees to Rural/municipalities with greater judiciary, parliamentarian and  executive roles. The Village Municipality is authorized constitutionally for promulgating necessary Acts, regulations, plan and programs. Local elected representatives have authority to coordinate line agencies program.  The other changed notice include, i) I/NGOs established coordination with local government ii) Municipality Executive Officer roles is changed from decision maker and execution to only execution of municipality decisions, and iii) A few district based development offices such as education, agriculture, veterinary service center, women development has already been moved to municipality offices. Forest, soil conservation and irrigation offices among other technical offices are yet to be localized at Municipality level.

Prosperity has become the main agenda of elected government in all across the country. In this regards, as authorized by the Local Governance Operationalization Act, 2017 local government has started formulating various Acts and Regulations though late. While interaction with local government officials the low progress in formulation of various Acts and policies were attributed to delay of forming institutional structures at province and federal level. Once the election is completed at province and federal level and framework for policy guidelines are given, then the work progress can be speed up.

With the objective of leading the Municipality towards prosperity, Rajpur Municipality of Rautahat has endorsed some essential legal frameworks such as Resource Sharing Act, Cooperative Act, Market Promotion Act, Economic Act and Code of Conduct. Moreover, policy decision for Disaster Risk Reduction, budget for climate change awareness activities, budgets for renewable energy resources and Plan to distribute tents /Tarpole for 1500 family have been included in their annual development plan of FY 20717/18. A total of six Acts are being formulated in Bhimeswor Municipality of Dolakha District. Melung Village Municipality of Dolakha Chairperson Mr. Narbahadur KC said with an aim of uplifting socio-economic condition of local people they are in process of preparing Acts in various sectors such as education, health, roads and physical infrastructures.

Most of the elected representatives are not well aware and even do not understand their roles and responsibilities. So, understanding DRR and CA and formulating Acts that support integrating CC and DRR into local development planning and budgeting process is beyond their capacity. Therefore, prosperity agenda could be the anchoring point for integrating CC and DRR into local development planning and budgeting process in Nepal

The dynamism of power and interest of local stakeholders has changed considerably after transferring unitary governance system into federal system. In the changing political context, the local elected representatives are in need of  capacity development support particularly towards mainstreaming climate change and disaster agenda into infrastructure development designing and implementations.