Kathryn March

Graduate Professor and Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Feminist Studies & Public Policy

Kathryn March is a graduate professor of anthropology at Cornell University who has worked with communities in Nepal's Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts since 1975. She says local environmental knowledge and community traditions should guide that effort.

March says:

“Nepal has an opportunity to take the lead in naming a distinctive type of mountain disaster while recognizing the communities most affected by it.

“Many of the terms used globally for natural disasters originated in the communities that first experienced them or lived with them for generations. Tsunami, hurricane, haboob, monsoon and lahar, for example, all come from local languages and lived experience rather than scientific terminology.

“Gangbal is a Tamang term associated with a great water serpent said to ride at the leading edge of catastrophic floods. It appears in local oral traditions and historical accounts of destructive flood events and may offer a culturally grounded name for the type of event that devastated the Lende-Bhotekoshi-Trishuli corridor.

“A term such as gangbal would not only provide scientists, journalists and policymakers with a concise name for a complex hazard, but it would also acknowledge the environmental knowledge of communities in upper Rasuwa that have long understood and described these dangers.”