Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction

Over the past few years, the mass media have desensitized the public to disaster studies. This decade is unique in the rapidity with which information is spread worldwide. Information plays a pivotal role in communicating the risk in industrial societies. The success of mitigating negative effects of risk depends on two relevant aspects. First and foremost, the state’s efficiency in regulating existent information, and second, the ways in which information is transmitted to a locale’s citizenry.

Under such a context, scholars and governors concentrated efforts to understand and monitor the unexpected effects of risk and disasters. Within this context, government officials and scholars have attempted to understand the impact of risk and disasters. After natural disasters, such as flood or tsunami, the media tend to portray pictures of mass death and human suffering.

Although some specialists debate about journalism ethics, there is no clear consensus about the pervasive role of information to trigger a much profound sentiment of panic within the lay population. One position holds that capitalism needs base upon which a disaster can become the vehicle for the community; others, influenced by geologists, climatologists and biologists, emphasize the need for states to intervene in controlling risk that may lead to disasters. Needless to say, this discussion is ongoing.

With the benefits of hindsight, Prof Rajib Shaw provides a compilation, structured in 20 chapters, that explores the linkage between disasters, environment and the community’s response, giving valuable guidelines and practical suggestions for professionals and policymakers concerned in the process of resiliency. He introduces readers to the development of community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR), which is a term widely applied in the specialized literature and studied throughout the world. Quite aside from this popularity, few studies have actually focused on practical cases examining not only the history of CBDRR but also delving into the necessary steps for enhancing community participation in the process of mitigation and recovery.

The preliminary chapters explore the conceptual dichotomies of human security, at the time, the third and fourth provide study-cases from Asia in a complementary way. The education process is of paramount importance in training policymakers to take disaster-related research in their priorities. In doing so, they should support academic and university work. Performatively, corporations may inject considerable capital to employ local residents, giving stability to the lapse of recoveries. In our times, these companies create a particular solidarity. Profits and businesses may ethically help survivors to reconstruct their obliterated homes. Therefore, in a post-disaster context, the financial assistance given by non profit organization (NPO), corporations and international organizations can improve community resiliency.

Chapters 7, 8 and 9, at a first glance, examine the needs of adjusting residents’ adaptation to emergencies. To some extent, any disaster leaves lessons, which, if appropriately learned, contribute to preventing the next one. The implementation of community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM) may save many lives, engendering in the locals the ability to strengthen their plans of rescue and evacuation. Chapters 11, 12 and 13 bring not only an overview of how this model has progressed in different countries but also appeal to the notion of sustainability to recover the self-esteem of communities. Resiliency depends upon the survivor’s trust.

Despite the mourning and obliterated houses, if survivors believe there are reasons enough to reconstruct their lives, the social bondage is revitalized. Of course, because of time and space, it is almost impossible to mention the content of all chapters, but the primary theme in this project seems to be that investment facilitates the process of risk identification to deter the negative aftermaths of disasters. As a new instrument, CBDRM allows for cross-cultural views and may be applied on non – Western cultures as well. Aborigines would gain so much in adopting disaster risk reduction policies due to their rapid accessibility to vital information that would allow the evaluation of alternative courses of actions. This point is debated in the last chapters. Basically, the efficacy of a coherent plan in mitigating the effects of disasters is associated to stakeholders’ commitment, which sometimes is troublesome. Until this point, we have succinctly examined the main argument in Shaw’s book. Although this valuable research seems to be illustrative for specialists, two important aspects should at least be reconsidered.

First and foremost, we must consider problems and disputes for monopolizing and distributing subsidy funds surface among survivors after a disaster. The power of capital not only reinforces the material asymmetries (as poverty) that facilitate the event but also enhances a biased sentiment of superiority. Starting from the premise, a hurricane or a quake is not a disaster in and of itself unless by the intervention of human beings. We strongly believe that all disasters are culturally determined by our own values, styles, urban designs and industrial base. Any catastrophe appears to be possible simply because the technology and infrastructure, originally aimed to make life safer, failed. Paradoxically, technological advances mitigate certain risks, but involuntarily engender new ones. Shaw, who is not considering this point, over-valorizes the role of capital in the recovery process.

Second, the introduction of business corporations in the process of reconstruction can generate a gap between survivors and the state. Theories of gentrification showed how in Third World, residents, who expect assistance from their states, not only are unheard but also their expectances are met by the private sector. Whenever the market fulfills the gap between states and their citizens, affected people are forcefully repatriated to other peripheral lands, infertile or with low resources for surviving. Cynically, international corporations involved in these types of stages recycle obliterated terrains at lower costs and sell on later for substantial profits. Ground-zero in NY has become a tourist attraction, and international investors who helped residents to accelerate their recovery also replicated voluntarily or not the same methods that made the disaster possible. In short, the attacks against World Trade Center created a discourse, which at the first instance shocked the Americans. To calm the public opinion, the State not only elaborated an ideologeme (narrative) that explained the event but also exacerbated patriotism and national superiority. Despite this tragic blow, the USA was on foot to fight against the axis of evilness. In doing so, New York City was commoditized in a tourist attraction that reminded the world of the American strength. The thematization of ground zero blurred the reasons of terrorism amplifying its pervasive effects. Today, few visitors really understand what has happened. As the key factors that facilitated 9/11 are not clear for the lay people, an event of similar caliber seems to only be a question of time. Revolutions, wars and conflicts end at museums under the banality of the tourist gaze.

It is important to note that the market is a double-edged sword, and sites of disasters can be commoditized in forms of tourist attractions. Thousands of visitors are eager to participate in what is called “dark tourism” or the visitation to tragic places such as those of mass death. As a whole, these visits help the community because it brings in capital to facilitate rebuilding. Even if these types of places generate attractiveness, the reasons of disaster are not only forgotten but also covered over. As a result of this amnesia, the event tends to be repeated again and again. This means that the commoditization of disasters affect our process of resiliency. Furthermore, the decline or lack of intervention of states in extreme situations may create negative effects for the community even if CBDRM is applied. Some Western countries, based on the calculation and cultures of speculation, seem not to be comparable to Asians, where the social bonds are stronger.

Starting from the premise the model CBDRM may apply to all cultures with emphasis on the altruistic values, what would be interesting to discuss is to what an extent, it may be applied to non western cultures. In fact, it is important to remind that disasters reinforce the social asymmetries generated by the economy. The process of recovery, unfortunately, is unable to break the productive logic that preceded the disaster.

To learn from disasters, we need precise plans. This assumption poses a more than interesting question, not currently being studied. Why is the Anglo world more concerned in disaster prevention than are Mediterranean cultures? Is this issue a result of their cultural legacy or a product of late modernity? It is interesting to see how disaster related journals in English speaking countries publish more material than Spanish ones. This means that disaster-related issues draw further attention in English-speaking countries than in the Spanish world. Most certainly, Weber (1992) envisaged this conceptual divergence finding Protestants were more sensible to work with than others. Capitalism has flourished in England and the USA because of their cultural matrix, but, unfortunately, Weber trivialized the role of mythology in his analysis. Complementarily, we found hard evidence that can explain why Spanish and Latin-American universities trivialize the applied research, syllabuses or doctoral programs in disaster issues. Based on Protestant predestination doctrine, Anglo culture developed less tolerance to uncertainness and future than Spanish ones. This reveals undoubtedly a cultural gap that merits investigation in other approaches.