Michelle Carnegie

Pathways for adaptive and integrated disaster resilience

The world is experiencing more frequent, deadly and costly disasters. Disasters are increasingly uncertain and complex due to rapid environmental and socio-economic changes occurring at multiple scales. Understanding the causes and impacts of disasters requires comprehensive, systematic and multi-disciplinary analysis. This paper introduces recent multidisciplinary work on resilience, disaster risk reduction (DRR), climate change adaptation (CCA) and adaptive governance and then proposes a new and innovative framework for adaptive and integrated disaster resilience (AIDR). AIDR is defined as the ability of nations and communities to build resilience in an integrated manner and strengthen mechanisms to build system adaptiveness. AIDR provides the ability to face complexities and uncertainties by designing institutional processes that function across sectors and scales, to engage multiple stakeholders and to promote social learning. Based on the review of existing academic and non-academic literature, we identify seven pathways to achieve AIDR. These pathways are a conceptual tool to support scholars, policy makers and practitioners to better integrate existing DRR strategies with CCA and more general development concerns. They describe institutional strategies that are aimed at dealing with complexities and uncertainties by integrating DRR, CCA and development; strengthening polycentric governance; fostering collaborations; improving knowledge and information; enabling institutional learning; self-organisation and networking; and provision of disaster risk finance and insurance. We also examine the implications of these pathways for Indonesia, one of the most vulnerable countries to natural hazards and climate change impacts. Our findings suggest that there is an urgent need to commit more resources to and strengthen multi-stakeholder collaboration at the local level. We also argue for placing the community at the centre of an integrated and adaptive approach to DRR and CCA.

Sedgwick’s geographies: Touching space

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950—2009) was one of the founders of queer theory and a significant contributor to the fields of literary theory and philosophy. The four papers in this forum consider the impact and influence her work has had on diverse fields of research in human geography. Specifically, the papers examine how her work on the epistemology of the closet has been materialized and contested by geographers of sexualities; how her queer theorizing inspired the diverse economies approach in economic geography; and how her understanding of affect offers an alternative to Deleuzian-inspired approaches to more-than-representational thinking in geography. The forum highlights various ways in which Sedgwick’s writings can continue to inspire novel thinking in human geography.

Sailing-trading livelihoods in Southeastern Indonesia : Adapting to change

AbstractSailing-trading livelihoods in southeastern Indonesia have undergone significant change during the later half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. This study identifies how geopolitical, economic, legal and technological drivers of change shape sailing-trading livelihoods. Using an integrated approach, it shows how these macro-level drivers articulate with sailor-traders’ individual and group-based responses at the local level. The findings highlight that over the study period, small-scale inter-island trading within Indonesia’s borders became increasingly competitive and monopolised. In response, sailor-traders strategically adopted new opportunities that involve international border crossings, including to Australia to harvest sea cucumber, transport asylum seekers and undertake work while serving prison terms. The concluding remarks are that while aspects of contemporary sailing-trading livelihoods are temporal and unsustainable, the overall ebb and flow of livelihoods reflects a broader pattern of adaptive responses amidst ongoing change.

Living with difference in rural Indonesia : what can be learned for national and regional political agendas?

Much research has sought to understand why mixed communities in Indonesia have been torn apart by violent conflict. By contrast, little is known about how people live together successfully in the mixed, low-conflict communities that exist in abundance throughout the Indonesian archipelago. This paper explores the inter-communal relations in the multiethnic, Christian-Muslim coastal village of Oelua in Roti, Nusa Tenggara Timur province. Mechanisms of agreement across ethnic, religious and livelihood differences have shaped and reproduced a low-conflict community — including transfers of land, labour, technology and surplus; use of customary law and conflict management; and social mixing and interpersonal relations. The findings suggest that there are lessons to be learned from communities like Oelua about how to foster social and economic inclusion, which could inform national and regional political agendas concerned with governing difference in a post-New Order Indonesia.