Jean-Christophe Gaillard

From knowledge to action: Bridging gaps in disaster risk reduction

A large amount of studies have been produced on disaster-related issues over the last century of research, yet there continues to be gaps in translating knowledge into action. This paper discusses the battlefield of knowledge and action for disaster risk reduction (DRR), outlining the need for a more integrative process consisting of bottom-up and top-down actions, local and scientific knowledge, and a vast array of stakeholders. The challenges in addressing the need for an integrated process are outlined alongside a potential road map for bridging gaps in DRR. The final section addresses issues to be overcome in order to implement the aforementioned road map. Future ways to bridge gaps in DRR between bottom-up and top-down actions, and local and scientific knowledge are proposed.

Climate Change’s Role in Disaster Risk Reduction’s Future: Beyond Vulnerability and Resilience

A seminal policy year for development and sustainability occurs in 2015 due to three parallel processes that seek long-term agreements for climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals, and disaster risk reduction. Little reason exists to separate them, since all three examine and aim to deal with many similar processes, including vulnerability and resilience. This article uses vulnerability and resilience to explore the intersections and overlaps amongst climate change, disaster risk reduction, and sustainability. Critiquing concepts such as “return to normal” and “double exposure” demonstrate how separating climate change from wider contexts is counterproductive. Climate change is one contributor to disaster risk and one creeping environmental change amongst many, and not necessarily the most prominent or fundamental contributor. Yet climate change has become politically important, yielding an opportunity to highlight and tackle the deep-rooted vulnerability processes that cause “multiple exposure” to multiple threats. To enhance resilience processes that deal with the challenges, a prudent place for climate change would be as a subset within disaster risk reduction. Climate change adaptation therefore becomes one of many processes within disaster risk reduction. In turn, disaster risk reduction should sit within development and sustainability to avoid isolation from topics wider than disaster risk. Integration of the topics in this way moves beyond expressions of vulnerability and resilience towards a vision of disaster risk reduction’s future that ends tribalism and separation in order to work together to achieve common goals for humanity.

Culture and disaster risk reduction: Lessons and opportunities

The value of physical science in mitigating the effects of environmental hazards is well acknowledged. Less acknowledged are the cultural influences affecting adoption of disaster risk reduction strategies, that is what influence ‘culture’ has upon hazard and risk. This paper explores the need to consider ‘culture’ within disaster risk reduction and cross disciplinary boundaries through four key questions: (a) How relevant is ‘culture’ to disaster risk reduction? (b) How can we engage with different cultures? (c) How can local knowledge be accessed and utilized? (d) How can local and scientific knowledge be integrated for the benefit of disaster risk reduction? The questions are answered through drawing upon case study snapshots from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, USA and the Maldives that explore geological-related hazard phenomena, including earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, and their effects within communities. Challenges and ways forward for ensuring the integration of cultural considerations into risk reduction and putting research into practice and practice into research are identified.

Learning from the history of disaster vulnerability and resilience research and practice for climate change

Humanity has long sought to explain and understand why environmental processes and phenomena contribute to and interfere with development processes, frequently through the terms and concepts of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’. Many proven ideas and approaches from development and disaster risk reduction literature are not fully considered by contemporary climate change work. This chapter describes the importance of older vulnerability and resilience research for contemporary investigations involving climate change, suggesting ways forward without disciplinary blinkers. Vulnerability and resilience as processes are explored alongside critiques of the post-disaster ‘return to normal’ paradigm. The importance of learning from already existing literature and experience is demonstrated for ensuring that complete vulnerability and resilience processes are accounted for by placing climate change within other contemporary development concerns.

The warias of Indonesia in disaster risk reduction: the case of the 2010 Mt Merapi eruption in Indonesia

This field note draws upon the concepts of vulnerability, marginalisation, and capacity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people to face natural hazards. As a case study, this paper highlights the response of warias, members of the LGBT community in Indonesia, during the 2010 Mt Merapi eruption. Through key informant interviews and observation of actual relief operations led by warias in several evacuation sites in Yogyakarta and Central Java, the paper highlights that warias contributed to disaster risk reduction (DRR) even though they are marginalised and discriminated in the country because of prevailing religious and societal attitudes. The paper argues that their needs and capacities should be acknowledged in DRR policies and practice.

Participatory Mapping for Raising Disaster Risk Awareness Among the Youth

This research note documents a recent experience conducted in the Philippines and that consisted in using participatory mapping to raise disaster risk awareness among the youth. Maps are cheap, easy to reproduce and help in materializing hazard, vulnerability and risk, and thus allow the youth to concretely appraise disaster risk in their immediate environment. This is particularly important among marginalized communities. The next step is hence to scale up the activity to the level of disaster risk reduction within schools and colleges.

Remittances in the face of disasters: a case study of rural Samoa

In Samoa, like in most Small Island Developing States, remittances are important to sustain people’s daily livelihood and become even more significant in the face of disasters. This study investigates the role of remittances in households’ response to disasters. The focus is on Samoa, where participatory activities and interviews were carried out in coastal communities affected by the tsunami of 2009, and some of which were further hit by cyclone Evan in 2012. It is found that remittances are very fast in reaching those affected and remain high in the long term in order to cope with and recover from disaster. Moreover, remittances interact with external aid since remittances increase when external aid is low and decrease when external aid is higher. Households receiving remittances were able to deal more easily with immediate security needs and recovered more quickly than those with no or limited access to this resource. However, remittances also benefit the wider community, economically, socially, and culturally, for example in perpetuating local tradition. We conclude that governments and aid agencies should take into account remittances in their relief actions and recovery programs.

Revisiting Geography Field Trips: A Treasure Hunt Experience

This Teacher’s Notebook documents an alternative way of designing geography field trips. It relies upon a treasure hunt, which is designed to foster students’ active participation in identifying relevant places as well as discovering and making sense of these places. The treasure hunt is fun and challenging and encourages students to think critically and creatively. The activity documented here is an assignment for an undergraduate class on the human dimension of disasters at The University of Auckland in New Zealand. However, it may well be applied in other settings for any geography classes.

Poverty and Disasters: Do Remittances Reproduce Vulnerability?

Abstract In many low-income countries, remittances are important in sustaining people’s livelihood and become even more significant during disasters. Meanwhile, the literature suggests that remittances are mainly accessible to middle and upper-income households, rather than to the poorest, thus implying differential capacities amongst households to overcome crises. The present study uses cyclone Evan that hit Samoa in December 2012 as a case study to test this hypothesis. It focuses on the village of Tafitoala and draws on interviews and participatory activities undertaken with the poorest households of the community. It indicates that the poor receive little to no remittances and that they struggled more than the rest of the community to cope with and recover from the cyclone. Their lack of access to remittances had negative consequences on the security and sustainability of their livelihoods. We conclude that remittances reproduce or even increase both inequalities and vulnerabilities existing within the community of origin.

Capacities in Facing Natural Hazards: A Small Island Perspective

Isolated communities on small islands are often characterized as vulnerable and marginalized. We studied the recent history of Laingpatehi, a village on Ruang Island off the north coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia to show that the marginalization-vulnerability nexus can be offset by capacity and social cohesion to enable sustainable livelihoods. The island has been impacted by volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and competition for marine resources from mainland-based fishermen. The community has shown a remarkable ability to cope and prosper in the face of a series of external hazards. We used a sustainable livelihoods approach to identify the assets that enabled the villagers to cope. Strong social cohesion was central to the ability to organize the community and confront hazards. A diversified livelihood strategy drawing on the small island environment and its coastal and marine resources, income generating activities in a distant satellite village, and significant remittances from employment in other parts of Indonesia underpinned people’s capacities to face hazards. Government assistance played a supporting role. The case of Laingpatehi demonstrates how remoteness, rather than being a source of vulnerability, can provide access to existing resources and facilitate innovation. Disaster risk reduction strategies should focus more on reinforcing these existing capacities to deal with hazards and less on physical protection and postdisaster responses.