Community Participation in Disaster Recovery

• Development and disaster risk are deeply linked
• Disasters reverse development gains
• Development initiatives influence the risk, vulnerability, and exposure of people, assets, and environments to disasters
• Knowledge of trade-offs between development and disaster risk reduction (DRR) may inform decision-making
• A conceptual framework for analyzing the trade-offs that underpin policy goals, initiatives, and decision-making processes is presented, explored and tested
• Trade-off dimensions are categorized into:
  • The aggregation of development and DRR gains and losses
  • Risk prioritization
  • The equity of decision-making processes and outcomes
  • The balancing of near- and long-term goals
  • The distribution of power and participation
• The framework is tested in the context of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) recovery in Tacloban, Philippines, in November 2013
• How decision-making trade-offs can be made more visible and useful is considered

Introduction

• Disasters destroy assets, entrench poverty, and reverse development gains
• Development initiatives influence disaster risk, vulnerability, and the exposure of people, assets, and environments
• Risk is an unavoidable aspect of development, but there is a threshold of tolerable and acceptable risks
• Exceeding that threshold can cause disasters

Scientific Knowledge

• Scientific knowledge of the relationship between development and disaster events is wide-ranging and extensive
• Disasters are increasingly understood as tied to reducing poverty and inequity, improving governance, and limiting climate change
• The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction identifies the same development-oriented factors as root causes of disaster risk that must be tackled to prevent the creation of new risks
• Historically, DRR policy and practice focused on managing disaster events and associated losses through response action
• There is still insufficient knowledge of the underlying drivers of risk
• Greater knowledge of risk drivers is imperative for proactive DRR policy

Relationship between Development and Disaster Risk

• Numerous studies have illustrated the complex, intertwined relationship between development and disaster risk
• The massive social and economic losses in Central America following Hurricane Mitch in 1998 have been tied to unsustainable economic growth policies that drove up vulnerability and reduced resilience through
• Development on floodplains
• Deforestation
• The marginalisation of smallholder farmers
• Globally, similar patterns are increasingly blamed for major disasters, for instance, the 2011 floods in Thailand and changes in seasonal flood regimes in the Mekong Delta
• Disasters typically disproportionately impact women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities
• The root causes of these inequalities lie in:
  • Biased social norms
  • Exclusionary power structures
  • The absence of the most vulnerable citizens from DRR and development planning and action
• Disasters reverse economic and human development gains, disproportionately so in developing countries
• Development is a double-edged sword for disaster risk; acting to both increase and decrease risk, depending on the development intervention, its context, and scale
• The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development embeds DRR-related targets in several sustainable development goals
• Unsustainable development pathways evidence the need to transform the predominant "risk-driving" relationship between development and disaster risk

Trade-offs

• One possible entry point into this issue is to examine the trade-offs within and between development and DRR decision-making processes
• Trade-offs are defined as decisions involving diminishing or losing one quality or desirable outcome in return for gaining another
• Trade-offs are inherent in situations where multiple objectives, stakeholders, scales, and/or time-horizons collide
• Trade-offs have been explored in a wide variety of fields, including:
  • Finance
  • Business
  • Land-use planning and management
• Identification and negotiation of trade-offs and competing interests is intrinsic to the pursuit of SDGs
• Hydropower development is capable of directly increasing flood and drought risks
• A broad trade-off between economic growth and disaster risk is inherent, but there is a need for more nuanced analysis of trade-offs in realms of development and disaster risk decision-making

Aim

• The overarching aim is to explore the relationship between development and disaster risk through the lens of trade-offs
• A new conceptual typology of key dimensions of the trade-offs between development and DRR goals, initiatives, and decision-making processes is presented
• The validity of the typology is tested in the context of a major disaster recovery process in Tacloban, the Philippines, following Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), in November 2013
• This typology provides an organising framework used to articulate key dimensions of the trade-offs in decision-making processes
• The five key dimensions articulated and tested are:
  • Aggregation of development and DRR gains and losses
  • Prioritisation of risks when seeking to reduce multiple risks
  • Equity of decision-making processes and outcomes
  • Balancing of near- and long-term goals
  • Distribution of power and participation

Barriers

• Losses and risks associated with disasters continue to increase, despite acceptance that development processes influence disaster risk creation
• There are significant barriers that are preventing knowledge from transfering to implementation
• Knowledge uptake lags behind the rapid pace of the rise in societal risks
• Articulating a typology of development and DRR trade-offs, and exploring how decision-makers might proactively navigate them, may lead to better understanding of the barriers in existing decision-making practices and to better alignment of the two, often disparate, processes
• The trade-offs lens and framework take DRR interventions upstream to the decisions and processes shaping development's influence on risk, and vice versa
• Understanding and re-framing trade-offs may provide an entry point for transforming development-disaster relationship
• Integration of DRR with equitable, resilient, and sustainable development

Methods

• A non-systematic review of scientific literature, grey literature, and policy and planning documents relevant to development and DRR was conducted
• The review assessed the extent to which the literature considers trade-offs, and the typology framework was developed from explicit, implicit, and constructed considerations and examples of trade-offs
• Explicit trade-offs used the term 'trade-off' to describe two issues that represented misalignment between development and DRR
• Implicit trade-offs described a trade-off situation, but did not use the term
• Constructed trade-offs were created by the authors using evidence and examples from multiple sources of literature
• Key questions were developed to explore each of the trade-off dimensions
• The trade-off typology framework was tested in a post-disaster (Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda) recovery and redevelopment context in Tacloban City, Philippines
• The testing sought to validate the framework by gathering empirical evidence on decision-making processes directly related to post-disaster recovery and redevelopment efforts at the city level
• Two rounds of semi-structured key-informant interviews were conducted in 2017 with representatives from:
  • National-, regional-, city-, and local-level government offices
  • INGOs, NGOs, and intergovernmental organisations
  • Homeowners associations and residents in the resettled areas
• The first round of interviews gathered data on the decision-making and planning process
• The second round on project implementation, monitoring, and evaluation
• A total of 41 interviews were conducted
• In six cases, two different individuals from the same government department or organisation were interviewed to gain different perspectives
• Of the 41 informants, two individuals were interviewed in both rounds of data collection, but are treated as separate data points
• In both rounds, interview questions addressed each trade-off dimension
• Relevance was determined through analysis of the central policy document for the City's recovery—the Tacloban Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan (TRRP), and other documents relating to the disaster recovery, as well as previous interviews
• Data collection tools were developed to respond to the most relevant key questions

A Typology Framework for Trade-Offs in Development and DRR

• Better understanding of the trade-offs between development and DRR goals, initiatives, and decision-making processes offers potential to advance mutually desirable development and DRR outcomes of equity, resilience, and sustainability
• A typology unpack trade-offs, organized along five key dimensions: Aggregation, risk, equity, time, and participation
• Each trade-off dimension can be further explored by posing and responding to key questions that reflect the interlinked nature of the trade-off dimensions
• The aggregated gains and losses resulting from decisions and interventions identify:
• How those gains, losses, and related risks are accounted for/distributed
• The distribution of power and participation in the decision-making processes from which the gains and losses are constructed and evaluated

Aggregation Dimension

• The aggregation dimension encompasses the trade-off between the gains and losses of development and DRR decision-making and action
• Gains are desired, anticipated, and explicit to planning processes
• Losses tend to be unintended, unanticipated, and implicit
• Insured and uninsured economic losses from disasters are increasing globally
• Economic losses concentrated in wealthier countries, but disaster losses are worst for low-income countries, relative to national GDP
• Small-scale disasters erode essential services, infrastructure, and assets in poorer countries
• A key consideration in this dimension concerns trade-offs between DRR and other competing aims or needs
• Public resources are finite and are stretched thin, especially in times of low economic growth
• Households must decide whether to allocate resources to basic needs, luxuries, or risk reduction measures, such as insurance
• The cost of living, housing prices, livelihood opportunities, and the availability of affordable insurance influence people's decisions to live in risky, hazard-exposed areas, as well as how to invest in disaster protection
• Non-financial factors can make people want to remain in a place that is hazard prone
• A main goal that can compete with DRR is economic growth or gains
• Competition for financial and human resources occurs between and within development and DRR sectors, but the two can be at odds with each other at all decision-making scales
• Assessing the implicit trade-offs in investment decisions may explain:
  • Who bears the risks and costs
  • Who receives the benefits
  • Why DRR investments are de-prioritised in favor of “risky”, but potentially profitable, investments
• Correlation between disaster-prone and profit-generating areas shows impending losses to be overlooked
• Where regulations are not followed, rapid growth is less likely to be risk-informed or resilient to future stresses
• Targeted DRR initiatives can be perceived as a limitation on growth
• Private investments can be seen as an opportunity for long-term risk reduction
• Under a strict economic-growth approach, the prioritisation of DRR investments will only occur if the benefits clearly outweigh the costs
• Yet, cost-benefit analysis does not account for indirect benefits, such as avoided social and environmental losses
• Data to demonstrate how investments reduce the economic impact of disasters are lacking

Risk Dimension

• The risk dimension defines the trade-offs made between the different, often interlinked, risks
• The likelihood of an event, and the magnitude of its consequences determine risk levels
• Multiple and changing factors of uncertainty make prioritising between different risks challenging
• The risk trade-off dimension concerns how different risks are weighed and prioritised, and how that impacts DRR or development decisions
• Decision makers prioritise between myriad disaster risks, non-disaster-related risks, and overall resilience
• In dealing with multiple risks, decision makers must also choose between investing in mitigation, prevention measures, or insurance coverage
• Insurance providers and public authorities must decide how to maximise both mitigation and coverage
• While most of the literature on risk interpretation and decision making is limited to single-hazard risks, the reality is more complex and globally interrelated
• Risks can be categorized as intensive (“high-severity, mid to low-frequency disasters”) or extensive (“low-severity, high frequency disasters”)
• Multi-hazard events include potential interactions between several hazards in a particular location
• Reducing a risk for one social group or community, or in one location, can mean negative consequences for others elsewhere
• Risk models and decision-makers face challenges dealing with the cascading effects of risks
• Risks are prioritised based on societal norms, beliefs, values, awareness among actors, trust in others, and how people deal with uncertainty
• Policy-makers should account for the ways individuals prioritise disaster and other risks
• Understanding the context, rather than labelling the failure to prioritise disaster risk as illogical or ignorant
• When policy-makers can neither predict nor understand how citizens relate to disaster risk, government-led interventions fail to reduce disaster risk

Equity Dimension

• The equity dimension addresses the trade-offs in the distribution of the risks, benefits, and losses from development and DRR decisions
• The definition of equitable as “fair and impartial" is subjective
• Neo-liberal economic model = solution to global poverty + cause of inequity
• Societal participation is a challenge for the vulnerable
• A trade-off between equity and equality—between:
  • Providing differentiated needs-based support
  • Equal Treatment
• A trade-off surfaces between affordable, widespread coverage and risk-based pricing
• In the context of planning insurance mechanisms, policy-makers confront the trade-off between
• Allocating resources to support DRR measures
• Dealing with insurable losses equitably
• Affordable insurance can create disincentives for DRR measures and drive up disaster costs
• Trade-off also covers the question of how to support those who have significant uninsured losses without incentivising people to do without insurance
• Disaster risks accumulate through numerous decisions
• The poor, experience impacts of disasters
• Better consideration of equity-related trade-offs requires an understanding of:
  • The social groups at risk
  • Persons without status, power, or wealth
  • Informal settlers
  • Those working in the informal sector
• Marginalised ethnic and racial minorities
• Women
• Children
• The elderly
• Those otherwise disadvantaged
• DRR measures, coupled with measures to increase socio-economic resilience, should prioritise the poor and the vulnerable

Time Dimension

• The time dimension deals with the balancing of current and future opportunities, threats, risks, and needs
• When the potential costs from future disasters and the potential future benefits from DRR are significantly discounted, short-term gains can come at the expense of increased disaster risk
• Low-frequency hazards tend to be overlooked in favor of high short-term returns on capital
• Increasing development occurring in hazard-prone areas all over the world illustrates the issue
• Cities attract long-term-insurance infrastructure investments
• Trend, underpinned by government-backed insurance policies, puts an increasing burden on the public sector in the long term
• Potention political costs
• Politicians face pressure to prioritise short-term needs
• Disaster-response situations generate urgency
• Taking steps to avert disaster risk entails uncertainty
• Politicians may not receive credit for policies that avert potential disasters
• Need for immediate disaster response VS risk management
• Financial risks rise (corruption)
• Reduction of regulations
• Comprehensive planning trumped

Participation Dimension

• The participation dimension deals with the degree and nature of stakeholder involvement in decision-making and how power is shared
• Institutional capacity to enable stakeholder coordination links with the potential trade-off between:
  • Efficient participation
  • Effective participation
• Engagement requires resources
• Planning without participation results in unsustainability
• Decisions and making processes are power
• Participation=shift in power
• Opportunities to question

Yolanda in Tacloban

• On 8 November 2013, “super” typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines
• The Eastern Visayas suffered greatest human and economic loss

Aggregation in TRRP

• Improve safety and reduce typhoon and storm disaster risk

TRRP Losses

• Water
• Sewage lack
• Housing
• Employment

Risk in Recovery

• 2016-2022
• Identified
• Typhoons have increased in priority over landslides and earthquakes
• Individual needs ignored

Equity in Process

• "Needs based assistance"
• Political patronage led to unequal opportunities

Time

• Short term - infrastructure
• Shortfalls in livelihoods may be from time

Participation

• Limited
• A common mandate failed
• City departments stuck to ways
• Power struggles

Discussion

• Potential
• DRR restricts development
• Scale/perspectives key
• Involves stakeholders

Conclusion

• Development undermines disaster safety
• Risk is created there
• Participation is important

This resource explores the significance of community involvement in post-disaster recovery and DRR. It highlights potential negative outcomes of planning without community participation. It also discusses trade-offs in decision-making processes related to disaster risk reduction.