Disaster risk governance in the lower Koshi Basin: Insights from multi-level and cross-institutional interactions

The Lower Koshi Basin (LKB), a transboundary river basin covering parts of India and Nepal, is impacted by multiple hazards, predominantly floods, landslides, droughts, earthquakes, and others. Studies have established that socio-economic conditions, ecological sensitivity, transboundary setting, and institutional arrangements increase Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) complexities. Building on this context, this research examines whether governance-related issues make disasters more enduring. The study evaluates institutional perspectives across national, sub-national, and local actors and experts from India and Nepal to demonstrate how misaligned priorities and coordination gaps contribute to disproportionate risks and cascading impacts across sectors. Using a mixed-methods design, the study draws on surveys, KIIs, CFGDs, pairwise assessment, and actor-network analysis to evaluate institutional perspectives across national, sub-national, and local actors and experts from India and Nepal. The Ecology of Games (EoG) framework is used to examine how actors interpret risk, negotiate priorities, and coordinate across overlapping administrative and transboundary spaces. Community insights are incorporated to assess convergences and divergences among stakeholders. The findings show that governance challenges in the LKB are driven by interdependent socio-ecological and institutional dynamics. The correlation results indicate a notable association between Institutional Type and EWS (0.60), suggesting that perceptions of early warning effectiveness vary across actor categories. Actor-network analysis suggests stronger alignment among local implementation-level actors, especially Local Governments and DRR and Health Focals, while their alignment with higher-level and expert actors remains weaker. KIIs and CFGDs support these patterns by highlighting delayed information flows, overlapping responsibilities, and limited local capacities. Pairwise results show clear priority differences, with Elected Local Governments giving higher weight to mortality (0.70), displacement (0.68), and caste vulnerability (0.63), while higher-level actors placed greater emphasis on infrastructure, emergency response, and risk transfer. Probability-based responses also indicate consistently high concern around the disproportionate risk faced by marginalised communities. These insights underscore the need for equity-oriented, multi-actor governance mechanisms and strengthened vertical, horizontal, and transboundary linkages to deliver coherent and socially responsive DRR outcomes in the LKB.