answer and 2 responses

answers

1. What role does community and economic development play in recovery?

2. Recovery is an essential part of disaster management. However, it is not well supported. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Provide your thoughts on this topic and substantiate your opinion.

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responses

Recovery is an essential phase to repair or rebuild houses and facilities. Also, reduce the risks of a similar disaster in future. It can last for years. After a disaster strikes all that remain are deaths, injuries and structural debris. The short-term recovery phase is immediately after the disaster to stabilize the victim’s lives. Long-term recovery begins when the emergency ends. Communities who are aware of the disaster are ready to help. However, they do not have any power to contribute. The International Association of Public Participation (2007) developed guidelines on how the community can participate to be empowered.

First, “Collective resilience” which the attitude of mutual helping and unity in the middle of danger (Drury, 2012). Contribute to survival by helping them emotionally and support each other. Victims need some resources (food, shelter, communications, and technologies), and know their family’s whereabouts. Second, Survivors’ resourcefulness. We need to understand community resources for empowerment community. Third, Vulnerable Survivors. Vulnerable should be engaged not just protected. When marginalized, elders lose opportunities for interaction and the ability to contribute to society, young people lose the wisdom and talents that elders can offer.

Recovery is not well supported. Most of the personnel who work in recovery phase are volunteers. As recovery efforts often require long-term commitments, these volunteers are having another their jobs. Volunteers can not stay for a long period, they have their lives to complete. That makes the workers in recovery are limited. Also, the community expects from the government a full relief in a short time, which is impossible to recover from a destructive disaster immediately.

Krieken, V., Kulatunga, , & Pathirage, . (2017). Importance of community participation in disaster recovery. Retrieved from http://usir.salford.ac.uk/43859/1/ID 086 from 13th IPGRC 2017 Full Conference Proceedings.pdf

Recovery is the ability to return business and economic activities to a state of health and develop new opportunities which result in an economically and sustainable viable community. Recovery is an integral and critical way of returning a community to vitality and self-sufficiency to initial position before the disaster occurred. Community plays an important role in recovery. People at this at a community level are vulnerable to disasters and experience great impacts for specific reasons. Local communities have a great knowledge of the local geology, livelihood options available and the hazard context. Therefore, local communities should be involved in disaster mitigation programs and supported by projects that help overcome the disaster.

The link between economic development and disasters is very important. Looking at disasters as economic development opportunities have become one of the key principles of disaster recovery. Along with supportive economic policies, infrastructure should be a key element for enabling economic growth after recovery. The economic development suggests that there are enough resources that help in mitigating disasters. Furthermore, economic development helps in developing initiatives and programs needed to support long-term recovery.

There has been an absence of adequate scholarly research on the role of recovery in disaster management. Furthermore, it is clear that most countries have not incorporated the appropriate disaster recovery programs. A lot of catastrophic events such as natural disaster have paralyzed entire countries, cities, and organizations. The government and its people have been slow in adopting proper disaster recovery and business community processes. Most of these countries take too long to recover economically which should not be the case. This proves that little is being done about disaster recovery programs.

References

Coppola, D. P. (2007). Introduction to international disaster management. Amsterdam: Butterworth Heinemann.

FEMA. (2011). Economic recovery support function. National Disaster Recovery Framework. Retrieved from https://www.fema.gov/pdf/recoveryframework/economy_rsf.pdf