Central and Western Nepal experienced several devastating flooding events from August 11 – 14, 2017, resulting in 180 deaths, 445,000 displaced households, 63,000 fully destroyed homes and 118,000 partially destroyed homes. In addition to this, the Ministry of Agriculture reported that 10 million U.S. dollars’ worth of crops was destroyed and nearly 70,000 livestock died due to the flooding. The 2017 floods affected 35 of 75 districts across Nepal, inundating nearly 80% of the land in the Terai region where Mercy Corps works.

Following the flooding disaster, Mercy Corps conducted a post-shock monitoring study in an effort to explore whether households receiving MREDs' "nexus" interventions - an approach that combines community-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) with market-based, economic incentives - supported improved disaster resilience relative to "non-nexus" households who were only exposed to more traditional DRR interventions.

Results from the survey show a clear benefit of MRED's nexus model. Households participating in the nexus intervention reported higher rates of household and community-level capacities and use of these capacities prior, during and after the 2017 flooding events as compared to non-nexus households, such as:

• Greater reporting of household-level DRR plans (16% higher)
• Evacuated to a safe place, collected documents and assets, evacuated livestock and warned neighbors 17% - 25% more often 
• Greater familiarity with risk-mitigating agricultural techniques (23% higher) 
• Reported access to savings at 20% higher rates 
• Used savings to respond to flooding 20% more often

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