Nepal needs to "rethink," not just rebuild, after floods: Analysis

Alok Bohara, professor emeritus of economics at the University of New Mexico and founding director of the Nepal Study Centre, joins Al Jazeera from Albuquerque. He describes a personal connection to the devastated region, having trekked as a student to Timure near the China border, a village he says has now been completely wiped out along with the community hub of Syabrubesi.

Bohara says roughly $4 to $5 billion in pledged aid, nearly a tenth of Nepal's GDP, is significant, but argues the country needs to "rethink," not just rebuild. He says Nepal adopted political federalism without ever developing an equivalent for ecological risk and planning. The floods exposed engineering risk from fragile mountain terrain, investment risk after six or seven hydropower plants, representing 10 to 12 percent of national capacity, and 40 kilometres of trade roads to China were destroyed, and household risk from building too close to rivers, which he says calls for solutions like flood insurance.

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