Multistakeholder Participation, Collaboration, and Networking in Disaster Risk Reduction and Pandemic Management: Insights and Future Policy Framework

Abstract

The natural and manmade disasters impact a society with loss of assets and human lives. Disasters leavepeople in vulnerable conditions and an overall economic slowdown is observed. The impact of disasters is highly complex and multidimensional in nature. It becomes imperative to handle the complexity of issues with comprehensive approach. Managing disasters effectively is one of the important challenges any government faces when it tries to be prepared with appropriate mitigation, rescue, and relief strategies. The unexpected nature and urgency related to Disaster Risk Reduction makes it important and relevant to involvemultistakeholders. This will help to bring down the severity and impact of the disaster on human lives and losses. Disaster Risk Reductionrequires meticulous planning and sharing of the responsibility among multistakeholders through networking so as to bring down the severity and minimize the negative impact of a disaster. Many research studies have suggested the multistakeholder approach in addressing the disasters. There are several gaps such as inefficiency of vertical management to deal the issues, involvement of multiple stakeholders, and lack of local public supportfor disaster. This paper, considering the case of COVID-19 as a pandemic and disaster, discusses the importance of multistakeholder participation. The paper presents an extensive review of the papers on the relevance ofparticipation of multistakeholdersin Disaster Risk Reduction and explores the scope and challenges involved and suggests policies to address the disasters, which utilizes Multistakeholder Participation.