Suchergebnisse

Flood hazards and the risks they present to human health are an increasing concern across the globe, in terms of lives, well-being and livelihoods, and the public resources needed to plan for, and deal with, the health impacts. This book is the first detailed assessment and discussion of the global health implications of flooding and future flood risk. It combines an analysis of the human health impacts of flooding with analysis of individual and societal response to those risks, and sets these findings in light of potential future increases in flood hazard as a result of climate change. Writt

Recent scientific outputs suggest that climate change is likely to cause shifts in the global pattern and intensity of flood events, in some regions increasing the exposure of populations to severe flooding. Potential future risks underline the importance of research and intervention work aimed at strengthening local capacity to cope with flooding, especially for the poor in developing countries. This paper reviews recent theoretical and applied research on vulnerability and adaptive capacity of households and communities in flood-prone areas. It traces the growing tendency for interventions to prioritize action at the local scale and suggests directions for further research to deepen understanding of actual and potential coping strategies.

In Colombia, five decades of violent conflict have displaced millions of people, many of whom now face severe risks from flooding, landslides and other environmental hazards in the places they have found to resettle. In our research, one of our main objectives was to better understand the experiences, vulnerabilities and survival strategies of conflict-displaced people living in hazard-prone locations in Soacha, an urban working-class district of Cundinamarca in the centre of Colombia, and in urban and peri-urban areas in or near Pereira and Manizales, both of which are cities in Colombia's main coffee-growing region. We wanted to create spaces within which such people could tell their life stories with dignity and agency. For socially and politically marginalised people who have suffered enormous loss and trauma, and the disempowering effects of violence, conventional social science interviews may reopen wounds and cause extreme distress. Furthermore, interviewees may feel that there are 'good', 'bad' or otherwise 'preferred' answers to the questions they are asked. In our research, we instead invited participants to share a piece of music or a song they valued with us, via mp3 players, before opening a conversation about their life stories. In this way, we intended for participants to 'territorialise' the research encounter by creating comfortable spaces where their taste and habits were central (Dos Santos and Wagner, 2018), and where they exercised greater control and agency to decide the topics discussed (Levell, 2019). We wanted the songs people shared with us to act as their chosen entry points into their life stories. This article offers some reflections on how talking about music, a cultural form linked closely with emotions, memory and identity, can provide a resource for better understanding the lives and experiences of others.

For the people that live around many of the world's volcanos, the effects of eruptive activity on livelihoods and wellbeing are seldom experienced as a one-off event. Not only do volcanos commonly enter long-lived phases of activity, during which the physical hazards they create alter in characteristics, but the way exposure to such hazards generates impacts on society and shapes responses by people and institutions also modifies and evolves. Within this dynamic process, the behaviour of the volcano provides a framing, but social, economic and political changes interact to shape unfolding patterns of vulnerability. The research presented in this paper explored this complexity of impact and social change for the case of Volcan Tungurahua in Ecuador, which has been in eruptive phase since 1999. Focussing on the people who live in different areas around the volcano, the study used interview and survey evidence to examine changing knowledge about eruptions and how people have experienced the effects of the volcano over time on their economic livelihoods, mobility, residence patterns, and access to services and infrastructure. Crucially, this meant recognising that the existence of a threat from hazards had societal implications, regardless of whether or not the volcano is actually in a state of high activity. These implications played out differently for different sections of the neighbouring population, with the strongest contrast emerging between the rural and urban populations, though the complexity of the case defies a simple binary comparison. The research underlines the importance of building a longitudinal element into analysis.

La literatura relacionada con el impacto del cambio climático empieza a dar cuenta de los diversos grados de vulnerabilidad de la población y de la capacidad de respuesta y de adaptación de distintos sectores sociales en el mundo. Sin embargo aún son pocos los estudios que, al analizar las respuestas a los riesgos para la salud derivados del cambio climático, señalen las limitaciones y oportunidades que dan forma a procesos de adaptación orientados a enfrentar los retos de salud. En este estudio se intenta avanzar por esa línea enfocándose en un sector pobre de la población indígena campesina mexicana. El artículo se basa en una investigación de hogares que se llevó a cabo de diciembre de 2006 a abril de 2007 en tres comunidades de la Sierra Tarahumara, ubicada al suroeste de Chihuahua. Los resultados revelan que incluso en un contexto de extrema pobreza y vulnerabilidad al cambio climático, la población desarrolla respuestas para afrontarlo y adaptarse. Así, los hogares tarahumaras han desarrollado tres tipos de estrategias: a) las basadas en sus usos y costumbres, b) la utilización del sistema de salud que ofrecen las instituciones públicas y las organizaciones no gubernamentales, y c) las prácticas sociales orientadas al exterior y la emigración a las zonas urbanas como canales de integración con la sociedad "occidental". También se advierte que varias políticas gubernamentales orientadas al desarrollo de las comunidades, con impacto en la salubridad de la población, presentan limitaciones por su falta de coordinación intersectorial; un caso peculiar en el cual se observa la generación de cierta sinergia es el del área de servicios de salud, donde se ha logrado retomar los usos y costumbres de la población valiéndose de representantes de las comunidades y de las ONG. AbstractThe literature on the impact of climate change is beginning to describe the various degrees of vulnerability of the population and the capacity for response and adaptation of the various social sectors throughout the world. However, there are still very few studies which, when analyzing the responses to health risks derived from climate change, indicate the constraints and opportunities that shape the adaptation processes designed to cope with health challenges. This study seeks to advance this line by focusing on a poor sector of the Mexican indigenous peasant population. The article is based on a household study undertaken from December 2006 to April 2007 in three communities in the Sierra Tarahumara in the southeast of Chihuahua. The results show that even in a context of extreme poverty and vulnerability to climate change, the population develops responses for coping with it and adapting. Tarahumara households have developed three types of strategies:a) those based on their customs, b) the use of the health system offered by public institutions and non-governmental organizations and c) social practices oriented towards other countries and emigration to urban zones as a means of integrating with "western" society. It also shows that various government policies oriented towards community development, with an impact on the population's health, have constraints due to the lack of inter-sectoral coordination. One exception in which there has been a certain amount of synergy is the area of health services, which has taken up the population's customs through the assistance of community representatives and NGOs.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to focus on improving the monitoring and evaluation of DRM capacity development initiatives.


Design/methodology/approach
– The paper first explores the complexities and challenges presented in the literature, before using empirical data from a research project in six countries (Ethiopia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Philippines, Haiti and Mozambique) to discuss current approaches to M
&
E of DRM capacity strengthening interventions.


Findings
– This is generally an area of technical weakness in the initiatives studied, with poor understanding of terminology, little attention to outcomes or impact and few independent evaluations. The need for greater inclusion of participants in M
&
E processes is identified and one programme from the fieldwork in Mozambique is presented as a case study example.


Originality/value
– The paper ends by presenting a unique M
&
E framework developed for use by DRM programmes to track the outcomes of their interventions and ultimately raise standards in this area.

We contend that the representational aspects of recovery play an important but under-researched role in shaping long-term outcomes for disaster-affected populations. Ideas constructed around events, people and processes, and conveyed through discussion, texts and images, are seldom neutral and can be exclusionary in their effect. This review draws insights from literature across multiple disciplines to examine how the representation of needs, roles and approaches to recovery influences the support different social groups receive, their capacities to recover, and their rights and agency. It shows how these representations can be contested and challenged, often by disaster-affected people themselves, and calls for increased attention on how to move creatively towards more informed, inclusive and supportive recovery visions and processes.

The paper examines the processes through which people forced from their homes by conflict can become exposed to heightened risk from environmental hazards in the places where they resettle. It reports on research undertaken with internally displaced people who moved to informal settlements in four locations in Colombia. With one of the world's largest displaced populations and a high annual incidence of hazard events such as landslides and floods, enabling people to create a durable sense of security in their places of resettlement is a major development challenge for the country. However, as the testimonies from individual experiences and perspectives makes clear, this problem is not one that can or should be addressed simply by enforcing existing land use and tenure regulations. The study combined qualitative interview methods with arts-based elements designed to facilitate and open up dialogue with research participants. We found that creating a permanent home, however modest, has symbolic meaning that reflects both personal struggle and collective effort: it represents security and stability, even in sites people know are associated with hazards. In tracing how they have interacted with multiple forms of risk, our work shows how displaced people have had to weigh up the threats they face against limited resettlement options, in an ongoing context of marginalisation. For complex reasons, this is a population that tends to be excluded from formal disaster preparedness and mitigation. However, there are indications that this prevailing situation could be challenged, promoting greater flexibility on the part of governmental organisations and enabling communities to become more engaged in disaster risk reduction. In bringing empirical depth to a topic of global significance at the intersection of displacement, disaster and development, we support the call for adaptable approaches to disaster risk management that can support displaced people more effectively and equitably.