National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal (NSET) implemented the program “Promoting Public Private Partnership for Earthquake Risk Management (3PERM)” with the funding support from United States Agency for International Development, Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) during October 2011 – April 2016.
This program focused on tapping the vast potentials of private sector for contribution to earthquake risk reduction in Kathmandu Valley and Nepal. Capacity development of the stakeholders was also a focus of the program. 3PERM thus complemented the on-going initiatives for Earthquake Risk Reduction in Nepal, especially the OFDA-supported Nepal Earthquake Risk Management Project Stage 2 (NERMPII).
The participation of the private sector is essential, and should be a “matter of fact” perpetually in Disaster Risk Reduction processes. Therefore, it is necessary to raise awareness of the private sector, convince the businesses that earthquake risk management is much more than “charity”, and demonstrate the economic, social and corporate feasibility of PPP in disaster risk reduction, and persuade that it is a sound investment to be done. 3PERM also emphasized on the added benefits of this program to other sectors such as tourism, cultural heritage preservation, contribution to social assets generation etc.
This 3-year program had been module with the view to
a) Raise awareness of all stakeholders, especially the private sector and other stakeholders that closely relate with potential earthquake risk reduction activities to be led by the private sector,
b) Assess the potential of the commitments and potential energy and leadership within the private sector and its potential capacity to exert pressure on the government to consider earthquake risk management as one of the priority areas for mainstreaming into the development processes, and
c) Implement a detailed study of the model PPP in urban regeneration to be piloted in a demonstration neighborhood of the core area of Kathmandu.
The original program includes three Key activities namely i) massive awareness campaign on earthquake risk reduction, ii) enhancement of public private partnership for earthquake risk reduction, iii) feasibility study of urban regeneration in core city of Kathmandu. Initial program duration was 36 months (September 30, 2011 – September29 2014). The program completion date was twice extended, first extension up to September 30, 2015. In view of the post-earthquake scenario in the aftermath of the Gorkha Earthquake 2015, there was a need to establish an organized and systematic approach towards providing support in the earthquake response activities. Such intervention, not envisioned in the original work plan and budget of 3PERM, deemed necessary. To provide support to the ongoing efforts of the government in the post-earthquake response it was envisioned to implement three new activities namely
1) Feasibility of regeneration of earthquake devastated 3 historic settlements,
2) Emergency shelter design, training and dissemination,
3) assessment of earthquake damage buildings.
The program has
• Raised awareness of all stakeholders, especially the private sector and other stakeholders that closely relate with potential earthquake risk reduction activities to be led by the private sector,
• Assessed the potential of the commitments and potential energy and leadership within the private sector and its potential capacity to exert pressure on the government to consider earthquake risk management as one of the priority areas for mainstreaming into development process,
• Conducted a feasibility study of urban regeneration in core city of Kathmandu, implemented a detail study of the model PPP in historical building regeneration, conducted studies on feasibility of earthquake devastated historical settlements,
• Completed two types of emergency shelter design, 2 pilot demonstration, and dissemination, and
• Completed detail damage assessment of 192,000 buildings in 14 municipalities and 1 village Development Committee of earthquake devastated districts. 5 million people of Nepal and 20,000 people of historic settlement within urban areas of Kathmandu valley and some private businesses were benefitted by this program implementation.