Dipesh Chapagain

• Environmental and climate change

• Germany
• Nepal

Human death and economic losses due to climatic disasters are increasing globally and the impacts relative to the country's economy are higher in low-income countries. Yet, the spatiotemporal trend and the cause thereof are still poorly understood. Several studies argue that the increase in impacts so far is due to the growth in population and wealth exposed to the hazards, and the role of climate change is not evident. Others observed a decreasing vulnerability, potentially due to economic growth, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation, which could have counter-balanced the effect of climate change. Importantly, the current findings are mostly from cross-country studies or developed countries. Low-income countries like Nepal are poorly represented in existing analysis, and in particular, there is a lack of information at the local scale.

This study will first map the high risk and vulnerable areas to climatic disaster in Nepal and provide new insights for DRR and adaptation planning and monitoring. Disaster losses normalized by the exposure at the local scale will be estimated as a proxy of vulnerability. Secondly, it will study the attribution of observed climatic disaster impacts to indicators of climatic hazards, exposure, vulnerability and DRR and adaptation. Finally, this study will estimate future risks of climatic disaster impacts in different future scenarios. Regional Climate Models (RCMs) based climate indicators scenarios in combination with socio-economic scenarios will be used to estimate the risks of losses in the Karnali river basin in the short and (2030) and mid-term (2050) future.

06/2022 - 08/2022: Young Scientists Summer Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

01/2020 - Present: Doctoral Student, Center for Development Research, University of Bonn, Germany

11/2018 - 12/2019: Doctoral Student, Institute of Development Research and Development Policy, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

08/2017 – 02/2018: Research Analyst, Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany

03/2016 – 05/2017: International Climate Protection Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany

04/2015 – 12/2015: Climate Finance Consultant, United Nations Development Programme, Kathmandu, Nepal

09/2013 – 03/2015: Programme Officer, OXFAM, Kathmandu, Nepal

07/2011 – 08/2013: Programme Coordinator, Clean Energy Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal

Master of Science in Environmental Science (2014), Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science (2009), Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Climate Change Adaptation; Adaptation Needs, Costs & Finance; Disaster Risk Management; Climate Impacts & Vulnerability Assessment; Risk & Resilience Analysis

Detection and attribution of spatiotemporal trends of climatic disaster mortality in Nepal

Doctoral Scholarship of the Heinrich Böll Foundation

Dr. Luna Bharati