Capacities in Facing Natural Hazards: A Small Island Perspective

Abstract

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.

Community Resilience to Cyclone Disasters in Coastal Bangladesh

“…Having plans for alternative income sources is useful for achieving household level resilience [27,33] and V2R has successfully implemented this activity for the two Bangladeshi communities. The people in the communities rely heavily on this area for their SL activities, matching arguments that many Bangladeshis trade-off SL benefits with dangers from hazards [2].…”

“…Having plans for alternative income sources is useful for achieving household level resilience [27,33] and V2R has successfully implemented this activity for the two Bangladeshi communities. The project has also provided disaster resilient tube-wells and sanitary latrines along with developing the internal road network (Figure 8a-c).…”

“…As per Figure 11, resilience functions at multiple levels [25] and various traits and definitions are not always fully accepted or explored in research or practice [11,24,27,60]. Local government or policies undertaken by the national government can influence resilience at individual, household and community levels.…”

The Dilemmas of Risk-Sensitive Development on a Small Volcanic Island

“…Many are geographically remote and are consequently socio-economically and politically marginal [30,31]. They lack the institutions and systems needed to anticipate and cope with hazards, including effective early warning systems (EWS) and systems for managing evacuations and the distribution of basic relief support [32,33].…”

“…The north of the island, meanwhile, has experienced a decline in the rural economy [7] (pp. [30][31].…”