Colombo City Without Floods: Forced Relocation of Underserved Settlers in the City of Colombo as a Flood Risk Reduction Strategy – the Case of Three Flood Risk Reduction Projects
Nishara FERNANDO (Sri Lanka)
The Importance of Community Participation in Disaster Risk Management
Erica Akemi GOTO (Brazil)
Built-in Risk: Linking Housing Concerns and Flood Risk in Subsidised Housing Settlements in Cape Town, South Africa
Robyn PHAROAH (South Africa)
A Need-Based Approach for Exploring Vulnerability and Response to Disaster Risk in Rural Communities in Low Income Countries
David O. YAWSON (Ghana)
Colombo City Without Floods: Forced Relocation of Underserved Settlers in the City of Colombo as a Flood Risk Reduction Strategy – the Case of Three Flood Risk Reduction Projects
Nishara FERNANANDO
Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
This paper examines the forced relocation process of three relocation projects (Lunawa Environmental Improvement and Community Development, Colombo City Flood Prevention and Human Environment Development Project and Sustainable Township Programme) implemented since the 1990’s to relocate mainly poor and marginalised families who lived in unauthorised underserved settlements situated in flood-prone areas in and around the city of Colombo as a strategy to reduce flood risk on one hand and rebuild their lives on secure locations on the other hand. Based on household surveys carried out in selected research locations, in addition to key informant interviews carried out with relevant government officials and community leaders, this paper stresses the need to formulate a proper relocation policy to relocate people living in natural hazard prone areas as some of the studied projects have not been guided by proper policy guidelines. As a result, the steps that followed to relocate families (pre-relocation phase, soon after relocation and thereafter) differed, with some improvements as well as drawbacks when compared to the relocation processes of studied relocations.
For instance, under the Colombo City Flood Prevention and Human Environment Project relocatees received one to two perch of land from the government with Rs, 20,000 in four instalments to construct the house, in addition to other basic services provided for the settlements in early 1990’s compared to the relocatees who received Rs, 424,000 to construct their houses under Lunawa Environmental Improvement and Community Development project, which was implemented by adhering to the National Involuntary Resettlement policy guidelines in 2001, with the active participation of the affected people (participatory relocation). On the other hand, under the Sustainable Township Programme, relocatees received apartments in a 13-storied apartment complex named Sahaspura. These apartments were within the range of 300 to 600 square feet and the size of the population resettled had serious implications for the management of the scheme, provision of public amenities, social organisations and intra community relationships. However, with these identified issues and problems at Sahaspura complex, the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development intends to relocate 70,000 households in the next six years into 10 high rise apartment complexes similar to Sahaspura.
The Importance of Community Participation in Disaster Risk Management
Erica Akemi GOTO and Jefferson de LIMA PICANÇO
Instituto de Geociencias, Unicamp (Universidade Estadual de Campinas), Brazil
The number of geological risk areas in cities located in “developed” countries such as Brazil has increased in the last years. This increase can be seen in cities like the ones in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area, Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area, Recife Metropolitan Area, and other cities. Those areas are a result of a fast and disorganised urbanisation, which took many socially and financial well-off individuals to construct their houses in places with geological and/or hydrological problems, like hill slopes and valleys. So it is important to implement measures with the goal to avoid accidents and disasters. These measures can be structural or non-structural. The structural measures include engineering/construction measures, such as retaining walls, wire mesh netting systems and rock bolting; and the non-structural measures can be non-formal courses, educational activities, risk area mapping and risk area management. Many Brazilian cities in the last years have chosen to implement structural measures and non structural measures with the goal to prevent accidents and disasters. It is believed that non-structural actions are cheaper than structural measures, and they are an efficient way to face those issues. In this paper, it was chosen to write about geological risk management. It is known that the technicians who work in those risk areas and the Government involved with the decisions to those places usually do not involve local community participation. However, it is this paper’s position that the local community should be deeply involved in risk area management. After all they are the ones who better know the place, the history and the local culture. It is therefore important that the technicians and specialists talk frequently with the inhabitants, and work together with them, trying to consider all the local particularities to better prevent accidents and disasters in those places.
Built-in Risk: Linking Housing Concerns and Flood Risk in Subsidised Housing Settlements in Cape Town, South Africa
Robyn PHAROAH
Research Alliance for Disaster and Risk Reduction (RADAR), Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Discussions on flooding in urban areas in developing countries increasingly emphasise its developmental underpinnings, linking exposure and vulnerability to poverty, governance failures and features of the built environment. Commentators often argue that the poor who are most vulnerable, particularly those living in informal settlements or slums, where dangerous locations, low-quality housing, inadequate or poorly maintained infrastructure and limited service delivery, leave them particularly exposed to hazards and amplify their impact. Reducing risk requires addressing these drivers with one, largely untested assumption being that the formalisation of housing addresses risk.
South Africa provides a case in point. Discussions on risk generally, and flooding specifically, focus almost exclusively on informal settlements. Although few explicitly link disaster risk reduction and the provision of subsidised housing, there exists an implicit assumption that providing poor households in informal settlements with a formal brick and mortar dwelling addresses risk. This is at odds with an extensive and well-established literature, focused primarily on developmental and housing concerns, documenting flaws in South Africa’s subsidised housing programme. This shows that not only are many settlements built in risk-prone land, settlements and dwellings are frequently poorly designed and constructed, suggesting the potential for continued exposure and vulnerability to floods and other hazards. However, there has been virtually no research on flooding in subsidised housing areas, and there has been no cross-pollination of ideas between those working on housing or disaster risk reduction.
Drawing on research in 10 poor, flood-prone settlements in Cape Town, South Africa, this paper shows that flooding is not confined to informal settlements. While it is assumed that moving people out of informal settlements and into subsidised housing solves flood-risk, they continue to experience flooding, at levels comparable to their counterparts in informal settlements. It also shows that risk has a strong built component, and that poorly designed and constructed dwellings contribute to and amplify risk, with the implication that better design and improvements in build-quality would substantially reduce levels of flood-risk. It illustrates that while divorced conceptually and practically, disaster risk and housing issues are critically linked. Addressing risk effectively requires a more integrated perspective that not only looks at risk beyond informal settlements, but also builds linkages between risk reduction and housing sectors.
A Need-Based Approach for Exploring Vulnerability and Response to Disaster Risk in Rural Communities in Low Income Countries
David O. YAWSON1, Michael O. ADU2, Frederick A. ARMAH3, Isaac G. ANSAH4, Canford CHIRORO5
- School of Agriculture, University of Cape Coast Cape Coast, Ghana
- School of Biosciences, Nottingham University, Loughborough, United Kingdom
- Department of Environmental Science, University of Cap Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
- Departmental of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana
- Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
The need to build resilient systems and societies in response to disaster risk is now a global priority. Vulnerability assessment is central to developing a holistic and integrated approach to disaster risk reduction or mitigating the effect of a disaster. Current frameworks for mapping vulnerability and planning response to disasters do not completely fit the realities of rural communities in low income countries where the bulk of citizens informally organise their own livelihoods, resources, space, security and response to disasters. Livelihood activities are undertaken to satisfy needs. Hence, understanding needs of people and communities in this context can help unravel vulnerability and response capacity to disaster risks. This paper, therefore, applied a need-based approach to explore and analyse the vulnerability of two rural communities in Northern Ghana to flood risk. Survey was done, using semi-structured questionnaire, to collect data immediately after the flood in 2007. Based on ranking of needs, the results show that survival and security needs (mainly food, housing, education and reliable income) were dominant before and after the flood. During the flood, however, survival and empathic needs were more important. The results also show the disconnect between institutional frameworks for disaster management and the communities and, therefore, shows the scope for policy and research in disaster management. However, in the context of sustainability, economic needs (dominated by income) were slightly greater than environmental needs (dominated by drainage, water and sanitation and relocation), which were higher than social needs (dominated by health and education). Interestingly, most respondents indicated that a reliable source of income was a prerequisite for satisfying social needs in the short term and environmental needs in the long-term. It is concluded that this approach is simple, intuitive and easy to apply to map vulnerabilities to disaster risk across multiple scales, as well as integrating into policy and management decisions on disasters.