Community Infrastructure and Livelihood Recovery Programme (CILRP)

Summary

The two major disasters, earthquakes of 2015 and flood of 2017, ravaged Provinces 1, 2, 3 and 4. The earthquakes affected the hilly regions while the flood affected the Terai. Hundreds of thousands of people, especially in rural areas—already living with limited access to public services—lost their jobs and livelihood options.

Disasters triggered by the earthquakes caused substantive damage to community infrastructures, including buildings, roads, bridges, trails and market facilities, irrigation canals, micro-hydro plants and drinking water schemes. The damaged infrastructures became almost non-operational, prompting the risk of migration for affected communities.

Rehabilitation of these infrastructures was, therefore, seen as being critical to provide livelihood opportunities and basic services to the quake-affected vulnerable communities. At the same time, it was also important to restore the livelihoods of vulnerable communities to enable their long-term recovery.

Background

UNDP launched Community Infrastructure and Livelihood Recovery Programme (CILRP), building onto  Livelihood Recovery for Peace (LRP)’s experience, to address urgent needs to build back better. CILRP is being implemented as an umbrella programme with different projects listed in Table 1 below. This indeed helps better coordination and synergy among different initiatives as well as reduces transactional cost for both UNDP and the Government of Nepal.

Table 1: Different Projects under CILRP

UNDP implemented LRP project from October 2009 to December 2015 to improve the socio-economic status of ultra-poor and poor households and communities, enhancing social cohesion, and strengthening local institutions to respond to supporting livelihood initiatives at Mahottari, Sarlahi and Rautahat districts. The project came to an end in 2015 with the impressive results of constructing 3,996 community infrastructures, empowering 917 community groups and initiating 84 cooperatives for continued fund mobilization.

Large scale devastation due to earthquake was witnessed in Nepal in 2015. The total value of damage and losses were reported to be NPR 706 billion (US$ 7 billion), particularly in the rural areas, with direct adverse impact on the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable and marginalized people. Similarly, in 2017, destructive flood swept away most of the southern parts of Nepal leaving massive losses of NPR 60.7 billion (UD$ 584.7 million) in Central Terai region.

The project LRP was then extended to CILRP to rehabilitate the community and productive infrastructures; support the livelihood recovery and restore accessibility of remote villages to market and administrative centers of the disaster affected areas.

Initially, the CILRP was executed in Dolakha, Kavre and Sindhupalchowk with the financial support from the Government of Mauritius in June 2015, which was later expanded to Nuwakot, Rasuwa, Dhading and Gorkha districts. Additional financial support and joint collaboration was further secured with financial support from International Medical Corps, Bridgehead Limited, KOICA, China Aid and respective Municipality Offices throughout the years from 2016 to 2018 for both earthquake and flood recovery.

Prior to the completion of the projects with the Government of Mauritius, International Medical Corps, BridgeHead Limited, KOICA, China Aid, UNDP/ CILRP explored additional funding from Qatar Red Crescent and Royal Thai Government. As a result, USD 2 million was secured from Royal Thai Government for five districts viz. Gorkha, Dhading, Rasuwa, Sindhupalchok and Dolakha while USD 150,000 from Qatar Red Crescent for Gorkha Municipality in 2018.

Currently, ongoing projects are being implemented in collaboration with the local municipal governments to rehabilitate production community infrastructures for the restoration and revitalization of rural livelihoods, provision of basic services to the people and assistance on their long-term recovery and economic needs. These have also generated short-term employment and empowered communities' resilience to disasters.

Approach

• Strong partnership and collaboration with the local governments for sustainability and additional resources mobilization
• Community-led decision-making and implementation through capacity enhancement on recovery and resilience
• Integrated approach on small-scale community infrastructure and livelihood recovery
• Cash-for-work modality on construction for short-term employment opportunity and immediate income to the poor household
• Promotion of local resources and materials 
• Gender equality, women empowerment and social inclusion, with the focus on persons with disability at all levels, to promote social cohesion

What have we accomplished so far?

Restored 425 community infrastructures such as irrigation canals, marketing facilities, community buildings, eco-tourism, drinking water schemes, rural energy and agricultural roads, among others, benefitting 275,300 vulnerable populations (53% women, 8% Dalit, 62% Janajati, 1862 persons with disability) and supported 199 livelihood interventions benefiting 103,295 populations (54% women, 14% Dalit, 53% Janajati, 1290 persons with disability) from June 2015 to December 2018. In addition, with financial support from KOICA, 10 health post buildings were constructed in Nuwakot district benefitting 125,000 population.

Besides, flood affected eight districts of centre Terai (Sunsari, Saptari, Sarlahi, Dhanusha, Mahottari, Rautahat, Parsa and Siraha) were provided with household start-up packages (non-food items) for quick recovery. This benefited over 200,000 flood affected population residing in 35,800 households in 2017-2018

Gender Equality and Social Inclusion

• 616,745 vulnerable people benefited of which 53% were women, 10% Dalits and 59% Janajatis.
• Over 100,000 people employed of which 31% were women.
• 4,838 single women headed households and 3,090 persons with disabilities supported.

Documents

  CILRP Factsheet

  FAQ