Christine Kenney

Recovery and Development: Perspectives from New Zealand and Australia

This chapter discusses the relationship between resilience, recovery, and development in relation to the 2009 Victoria, Australia wildfires and the 2011 Christchurch earthquake; events that have had significant implications for Australian and New Zealand approaches to Disaster Risk Reduction and post-disaster development. Following a review of the resilience literature, discussion is framed around three issues. The first is people’s accounts of the disruption and challenges encountered and how they responded to them. The second issue builds on observed differences between community groups with regard to how well they responded to these challenges to examine how individual and community variability in adaptive capacities contribute to explaining differences in the reported effectiveness of community recovery activities. The third issue focuses on how lessons learned from these events are facilitating the on-going development in communities that can expect to face hazard events in the future. The scale, complexity, national significance and duration of these events provide opportunities to build understanding of how the adaptive capacities of people (e.g., self-efficacy), communities (e.g., inclusivity, sense of community, collective efficacy) and government agencies and businesses (e.g., empowerment, trust) can, individually and collectively, facilitate recovery and development in the aftermath of a major disaster.

Pathways for Transformation: Disaster Risk Management to Enhance Resilience to Extreme Events

Disaster risk from extreme events and development are intimately linked. Disaster risk management influences and is affected by local development strategies. Trade-offs made in policy and implementation determine winners and losers on the basis of unequal capacity, susceptibility and hazard exposure. Transformation has been introduced as a concept opening new policy space for fundamental shifts in development trajectories. Though policy neutral, when combined with normative frameworks such as the Sustainable development goals it can open up leverage points for determining development trajectories. There is limited empirical evidence on which to base understanding of transformative disaster risk management policy though some work has been done in sister domains such as climate change mitigation and adaptation. This study asks whether transformation pathways for disaster risk management can be observed, offering an initial qualitative analysis to inform policy development. It is based on five case studies drawn from diverse locations exposed to a range of extreme events, examined through a conceptual framework offering five indicators of transformation to aid analysis: intense interaction between actors; the intervention of external actors; system level change extending beyond efficiency to governance and goals; behavior beyond established coping strategies; and behavior extending beyond established institutions. Core characteristics of transformative pathways for disaster risk reduction are identified, including pathway competition, pathway experimentation, pathway scale effects and pathway lock-in. These characteristics are seen to determine the extent to which the disruption consequent on extreme events leads to either transformatory change or relative stasis. The study concludes that transformative disaster risk management, both intentional and incidental can be observed. It is seen that transformations occur primarily at local level. Where policy level change occurs this generally played out at local level too. The particular insight of the study is to suggest that most often the burden of transformation is carried at the local level through the behavior of individuals, populations and civil society. This observation raises an important question for further work: How can the burden of undertaking transformation be shared across scales?

Synergising Public Health Concepts with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction: A Conceptual Glossary

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015) is a global strategy for addressing disaster risk and resilience that has been ratified by member countries of the United Nations. Its guiding principles emphasise building resilience through inter-sectoral collaboration, as well as partnerships that facilitate community empowerment and address underlying risk factors. Both public health and the emergency management sector face similar challenges related to developing and implementing strategies that involve structural change, facilitating community resilience and addressing individual risk factors. Familiarity with public health principles enables an understanding of the holistic approach to risk reduction that is outlined within the Sendai Framework. We present seven concepts that resonate with contemporary public health practice, namely: the social determinants of health; inequality and inequity; the inverse care law; community-based and community development approaches; hard to reach communities and services; the prevention paradox; and the inverse prevention law. These ideas from public health provide a useful conceptual base for the ”new” agenda in disaster risk management that underpins the 2015 Sendai Framework. The relevance of these ideas to disaster risk management and research is illustrated through drawing on the Sendai Framework, disaster literature and exemplars from the 2010–2011 earthquakes in Canterbury, New Zealand.

Ngā Mōwaho: an analysis of Māori responses to the Christchurch earthquakes

Since September 2010, a series of earthquakes have caused widespread social, financial and environmental devastation in Christchurch, New Zealand. Anecdotal evidence suggests that local Māori responded effectively to facilitate community recovery and resilience. However, the form, content and extent of that response has not been adequately recognised or documented. This qualitative research project, conducted in partnership with Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, has documented the way in which Māori cultural factors have facilitated disaster risk reduction and management in response to the earthquakes. This paper explores sets of understandings about marginalisation and inclusion within the narratives of 70 Māori community members who contributed to this research. Forms of marginalisation expressed in participants’ narratives include delayed linkages to the formal emergency management infrastructure, difficulties integrating Māori volunteers into the mainstream response as well as enduring barriers to Māori engagement within Civil Defence, illustrated in a lack of Māori representation as well as tikanga Māori within emergency planning. We argue that the knowledge, principles and practices embedded within Māori responses to the Christchurch earthquakes may be contextually relevant for national and regional policy development in the area of disaster risk management, response and recovery.

Shakes, Rattles and Roll Outs: The Untold Story of Māori Engagement with Community Recovery, Social Resilience and Urban Sustainability in Christchurch, New Zealand

Abstract On September 4, 2010 a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the Canterbury region of New Zealand, heralding a sequence of earthquakes, which included a fatal 6.2 earthquake centred under Christchurch City on February 22, 2011. In response, local Māori recovery initiatives were collaborative, effective and shaped by cultural values, including the principle ‘aroha nui ki te tangata’ (extend love to all). Disaster sector stakeholders are increasingly recognising the value of community-led initiatives that facilitate social resilience. In contrast, cultural approaches to facilitating community resilience receive minimal acknowledgement. The Māori response to the Christchurch earthquakes and subsequent recovery process constitutes an exemplar of best practice. The Joint Centre for Disaster Research in partnership with the Christchurch Iwi (tribe) Ngāi Tahu, conducted research to identify, and document the ways Māori cultural factors facilitated community resilience in response to the earthquakes. A Māori qualitative research methodology has shaped the community-based participatory research design. Māori research participants views were ascertained though semi-structured and focus group interviews. Dialogical and narrative interviewing approaches were used to foster community engagement, as well as capture Māori understandings and practices associated with disaster management, recovery and resilience. Data analysis drew on social theories, risk perspectives and indigenous epistemological concepts. Analysis of the results suggest that New Zealands disaster response policies may be enhanced by the integration of Māori approaches to facilitating disaster risk mitigation, community recovery and social resilience. This paper documents the different levels of support that were extended to whānau (families), communities and responding agencies. The cultural principles that underpin the extension of support are examined in relation to Bruno Latours theories about how technologies shape action and Putnams ideas on social capital. The impact of cultural support strategies on social resilience is addressed and the relevance to national and local authority disaster recovery strategies outlined.

The Inverse Response Law: Theory and Relevance to the Aftermath of Disasters

The Inverse Care Law is principally concerned with the effect of market forces on health care which create inequities in access to health services through privileging individuals who possess the forms of social capital that are valued within health care settings. The fields of disaster risk reduction need to consider the ways in which inequities, driven by economic and social policy as well as institutional decision-making, create vulnerabilities prior to a disaster, which are then magnified post disaster through entrenched structural differences in access to resources. Drawing on key principles within the Inverse Care Law, the Inverse Response Law refers to the idea that people in lower socio-economic groups are more likely to be impacted and to experience disparities in service provision during the disaster response and recovery phase. In a market model of recovery, vulnerable groups struggle to compete for necessary services creating inequities in adaptive capacity as well as in social and wellbeing outcomes over time. Both the Inverse Care Law and the Inverse Response Law focus on the structural organisation of services at a macro level. In this article, the Inverse Care Law is outlined, its application to medical treatment following disasters considered and an explanation of the Inverse Response Law provided. Case studies from recent disasters, in London, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Mexico City are examined in order to illustrate themes at work relating to the Inverse Response Law.