Experiencing local community resilience in action: Learning from post-disaster communities

Abstract

Although increasing attention has been given to the need to engage local communities and facilitate community resilience, discrepancies between theory and practice remain evident. Myths, misconceptions and mistakes persist in post-disaster emergency operations, and in the reconstruction and re-development efforts following disaster. The 'command and control' approach typically deployed by disaster management agencies results in an increasing dependency on external support and annihilates the potentialities of local communities. Learning lessons from post-disaster interventions is important in order to better understand how to orient development interventions, especially those addressed to the sustainable development of vulnerable areas, such as mountain and rural territories. We emphasise the importance of recognizing community resilience and the capacity of local communities to self-organise.We describe examples of community resilience in action as it occurred following the earthquake in the Province of L'Aquila in the Abruzzo region of central Italy on 6 April 2009. We discuss the aftershock economies and aftershock societies that developed in the extraordinary communities that emerged around rural villages in the mountain areas around L'Aquila. A multi-methods approach was used, primarily drawing on personal experiences of life in the autonomous locally-organised camps that were established in rural areas following the earthquake. We conclude that the persistence of various disaster myths and the failure to acknowledge community resilience undermine more effective, sociallysustainable, disaster management and rural development planning. Learning from the post-disaster communities that arose in the L'Aquila post-earthquake mountain territory, we argue that in postdisaster management and in rural development planning, there should be a greater awareness of the underlying community resilience, and we suggest that greater attention should be given to understanding, recognizing and strengthening the capacities of local communities and the resilient social processes they put into action in order to address the negative social and economic impacts they experience during crises.

Understanding the historical institutional context by using content analysis of local policy and planning documents: Assessing the interactions between tourism and landscape on the Island of Terschelling in the Wadden Sea Region

“…If the potential synergies between tourism and landscape are recognised and regional development options that find a balance between tourism and landscape are selected, then tourism could be an opportunity to increase the social-ecological resilience of a region (Buckley, 2011;Heslinga et al, 2017). Resilience is a characteristic of a social-ecological system and can be considered as the ability to continuously change, adapt and transform in response to present and future stresses and tensions (Carpenter, Westley, & Turner, 2005;Imperiale & Vanclay, 2016). Resilience is a key concept in SES thinking (Anderies et al, 2004;Folke et al, 2010).…”

Resilience of an Earthquake-Stricken Rural Community in Southwest China: Correlation with Disaster Risk Reduction Efforts

“…However, community resilience is not simply a characteristic or property possessed by a community but also an ongoing dynamic process whereby resilience is enhanced by certain activities [25,26]. Community resilience has also been seen as a social process through which local communities enact collective action independently for community survival and wellbeing [27]. In a more specific manner, CARRI (Community and Regional Resilience Institute) considers community resilience as the ability to monitor threats and reduce negative effects of threats through effective response and adaption [28].…”

‘Interrupted’ Landscapes: Post-Earthquake Reconstruction in between Urban Renewal and Social Identity of Local Communities

“…On the other hand, we can observe spontaneous groups and associations of citizens emerging independently from formal institutions during the period of reconstruction following natural disasters [20,21], which promote an inclusive vision of disaster recovery rather than an elitist and top-down one [29,30]. In this sense, disaster resilience could be considered as a place-based process [31,32], enacted by grassroots groups that assume, together with the local institutions, the responsibility for reconstructing the area affected by a disaster, experiencing a spontaneous and autonomous way of taking action [20,33,34].…”