A new initiative advocates engaging more with people affected by events such as bushfires and floods to improve recovery after disaster.
With record heatwaves, damaging floods, raging fires, and violent storms, the world faces an onslaught of events causing severe disruption to communities. And how we respond in the aftermath of these disasters is becoming one of the most significant tests of our time.
“There’s no question that with climate change, rapid urbanisation and growing inequality, more people are at risk of experiencing disasters than ever before,” says disaster response and risk reduction expert Professor David Sanderson, the Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture. “Getting recovery right is crucial to lives and livelihoods, but how this tends to happen at the moment doesn’t prioritise people and, at worst, exacerbates disaster further.”
Prof. Sanderson has founded HowWeSurvive, a long-term, independent initiative to change how community-centred disaster recovery efforts are enacted and understood. Funded by the Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture endowment, it aims to instil active engagement and participation with local communities in all disaster recovery and resilience efforts.
Trawling through royal commission reports going back 25 years, Prof. Sanderson and his team have begun compiling stories of survival from close to a thousand people in communities across Australia through the HowWeSurvive website. The purpose is to provide a platform for the many voices of local community members overlooked post-disaster and develop knowledge and tools to reform the sector from the ground up.
“We’re hoping people affected by disaster will add their own stories over time,” Prof. Sanderson says. “HowWeSurvive champions best practices for community-centred recovery, which is about learning from the people directly affected by disasters.
“Because, too often, those affected by disaster are not engaged in their recovery by current systems and that needs to change.”
Centring community voices
The consensus among all parties involved in disaster response is that community-centred approaches to recovery are the most successful and sustainable.
“If you talk with communities, many are willing to play a central role in their own recovery efforts after disasters,” Prof. Sanderson says. “But disaster recovery is still dominated by top-down command-and-control philosophies where the needs of people are simply ignored.”
Prof. Sanderson says government agencies might not be set up to make enough time to engage with communities in the long term. Meanwhile, local councils and non-government organisations can be under-resourced and have different working methods, which makes coordinating a genuine community-centred recovery difficult.
“This can change, though; we just need to start thinking and acting differently to the status quo,” Prof. Sanderson says. “It’s very possible to redesign disaster recovery to put people at the centre of decisions that affect them and their families.”
Prof. Sanderson says the critical shift is for decision-makers to listen better. This means making the space for proper assessment and consultation with people affected by the disaster.
“Listening is about hearing and responding to the priorities of people who have had their lives disrupted,” Prof. Sanderson says. “All the evidence shows recovery is more successful when people are empowered and engaged in the process of their own self-determination.”
In practice, this means better coordinating recovery efforts between organisations and spending time in disaster-affected communities to speak with those affected on the ground. It also means reviewing the actions of emergency response agencies and calling out bad practices that overlook community voices.
“We’ll also be examining where we can better centre community in disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness efforts,” Prof. Sanderson says.
Reshaping disaster recovery
One particular focus for the initiative is housing recovery after a disaster. Many communities affected by disasters face challenges with temporary shelters, high costs, and too-long timelines for rebuilding.
Furthermore, issues such as improper certification, poor design practices, and building in dangerous locations (such as flood plains) contribute to more significant damage and disruption to communities when floods, bushfires, and other hazards occur.
“There is no silver bullet for housing recovery after a disaster,” Prof. Sanderson says. “But we have a project with the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), where we will seek out the solutions that work best for the people affected by disaster in the short, medium, and long term.”
The HowWeSurvive initiative plans to produce a State of Listening report every two years to help build a long-term body of evidence about what works best for community-centred disaster recovery. An annual Disaster Recovery Almanac will also detail the first-hand experiences of people in the thick of disaster recovery in Australia.
“There are still a lot of questions about how community-centred recovery is best supported,” Prof. Sanderson says. “But we’ll continue to develop tools and share the best resources and knowledge to support communities with recovery efforts now and in the future.”
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