The COVID-19 pandemic is an evolving urban crisis. This research paper assesses impacts of the lockdown on food security and associated coping mechanisms in two small cities in Bangladesh (Mongla and Noapara) during March to May 2020. Due to restrictions during the prolonged lockdown, residents (in particular low-income groups) had limited access to livelihood opportunities and experienced significant or complete loss of income. This affected both the quantity and quality of food consumed. Coping strategies reported include curtailing consumption, relying on inexpensive starchy staples, increasing the share of total expenditure allocated to food, taking out loans and accessing relief. The pandemic has exacerbated the precariousness of existing food and nutrition security in these cities, although residents with guaranteed incomes and adequate savings did not suffer significantly during lockdown. While coping strategies and the importance of social capital are similar in small and large cities, food procurement and relationships with local governments show differences.
This paper investigates empirically how the international aid community (IAC)—donors and practitioners—considers and implements disaster resilience in a specific country setting, Nepal, and throughout the rest of the world. A key finding is that there is ambivalence about a concept that has become a discourse. On a global level, the IAC utilises the discourse of resilience in a cautiously positive manner as a bridging concept. On a national level, it is being used to influence the Government of Nepal, as well as serving as an operational tool of donors. The mythical resilient urban community is fashioned in the IAC's imaginary; understanding how people create communities and what type of linkages with government urban residents desire to develop their resilience strategies is missing, though, from the discussion. Disaster resilience can be viewed as another grand plan to enhance the lives of people. Yet, regrettably, an explicit focus on individuals and their communities is lost in the process.
Global discussions of risk in the disaster risk reduction literature do not necessarily reflect the range of risk as understood by residents in the urban South. This intra-urban comparison from Bharatpur, Nepal, where the Gorkha earthquake struck in 2015, shows how residents in two different wards perceive risks related to themselves, their families and their urban environment. The continuum of perceived urban risk includes events such as the Gorkha earthquake and the administrative change, as well as everyday concerns such as poor quality of infrastructure provision and economic insecurity. By contrasting the views of these residents of an "ordinary" city in the urban South, and comparing them also with the views of the local authority, this paper allows for an enriched understanding of how risk is understood, highlighting the breadth of concerns involved, and the tensions in understandings of the full spectrum of urban risk. Understandings and definitions of risk matter. If perceptions of risk from the local level are not included within the broader disaster risk reduction discourse, this shapes and in effect limits the risks that are actually managed through policy and practice. Keywords citizen-state relations / disaster risk reduction / earthquake / economic security / Nepal / policy and practice / risk perceptions / urban inequality / urban risk Hanna A ruszczyk is a post-doctoral research associate at durham university's Institute of Hazard, risk and resilience. Her research interests lie in the intersection of cities, risk perceptions, urban risk governance frameworks and resilience building. Her co-edited interdisciplinary book on the Gorkha earthquake is forthcoming in 2018. Evolving narratives of hazard and risk: The Gorkha Earthquake, Nepal, 2015 will be published by Palgrave Pivot.
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