Reducing landslide risk in areas of unplanned housing in the Caribbean—a Government‐Community partnership model

Abstract

Unplanned housing developments in vulnerable communities on steep tropical and subtropical hillslopes in many developing countries pose major problems for the residents themselves; for Governments, in terms of potential relocation costs; for engineers in determining the precise nature of the hazard and risk; and for donor agencies, such as the World Bank, in establishing the form of disaster mitigation policies that should be promoted. We present a new low-cost, community-based approach to landslide risk reduction in such a context. It is founded on the vision that there is often sufficient capacity within Governments to address such landslide issues without needing to incur significant additional costs by employing non-Government specialist staff. Such expenditure adds to debt and only suboptimally builds within-country capacity. The approach we present develops a cross-ministry Government management team, implements a community-based approach to landslide risk assessment, develops low-cost interventions through the social intervention fund and builds capacity through community knowledge transfer. We report on the successful pilot undertaken in the Skate Town community,

Implementation of community‐based landslide hazard mitigation measures: the role of stakeholder engagement in ‘sustainable’ project scale‐up

“…Anderson et al . (2007b) have made clear that defining ‘the community’ on the one hand and identifying the relational elements that would be catalytic for the intervention on the other is of critical importance to the success of the implementation. For example, the requirement, by the PRF, for a community to configure a Community Project Committee (CPC) for such projects is a key element of community mobilization and sensitization.…”

“…First, we must maximize the advantages that community‐based initiatives, such as MoSSaiC, can demonstrate: those of on‐the‐ground service provision (landslide hazard reduction), capacity building, informing policy and ‘serving as beacons, or pilot demonstrations of alternative pathways’ in development (Goulet and Christian, 2002, p. 207). To be effective in these areas, in a result‐driven culture, we may actually need to slow the MoSSaiC project cycle down (that is, spend more time on the pre‐ and post‐construction phases) in order to ensure that the results are the ones we want, and to reduce the likelihood of having to intervene time and again in order to achieve these results (Anderson et al ., 2007b). Evidence suggests that the improvement in practice to which Mayoux and Mosedale (2005) and Hulme (2000) refer may take place at a rate of change that is slower than the fastest possible rate (World Bank, 1996).…”

Managing Risk in Small Steps: Achieving Landslide Risk Reduction by Strategic Incrementalism in the Eastern Caribbean

“…Having the government ‘own’ the vision and approach at the initial stage was unquestionably catalytic in facilitating the implementation of the pilot community‐based project, in partnership with the local social intervention fund (Anderson et al ., ). This second stage is, in many ways, the critical one—it reflects the actual construction on the ground of the community‐based approach.…”

Knowledge exchange in crisis settings: A scoping review

“…A larger proportion of environmental crisis studies (n = 14) reported on active KE [55,[67][68][69]71,73,74,76,77,79,81,84,85,109]. Theoretical frameworks underpinning active KE in environmental settings were aligned with participatory and collaborative principles, aiming to develop a more holistic understanding of a crisis inclusive of a range of knowledge [67][68][69]71,74,77,81,83]. Active KE environmental crisis approaches encompassed the exchange of formalised knowledge (e.g.…”