Disaster resilience and children: managing food security in Zimbabwe's Binga District

The growing recognition of the vulnerability of children to disasters has added a new impetus to the concept of their involvement in disaster risk reduction programs. Involving children in disaster risk reduction is among those aspects promoted in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 to enhance the resilience of disaster-affected communities. This article presents the results from a research study which investigated the involvement of children in disaster risk reduction programs in Binga District, Zimbabwe, focusing on food security. The results suggest that children are an invaluable part of human agency in disaster contexts, especially in view of increasing numbers of children orphaned by HIV and AIDS. Yet their involvement is still contested. Unless family and cultural pressures imposed on children are recognized and managed in disaster risk programming, the potential of children’s involvement is likely to be missed in building disaster-resilient communities

The intersection of gender and social class in disaster: balancing resilience and vulnerability.

Those who experience disaster are widely recognised as an undifferentiated group, labeled 'victims'. In the immediate crisis period, it is difficult for professionals to differentiate, except crudely, between varying levels of need and still carry out urgent duties and responsibilities, however, it soon becomes apparent that some are hit harder than others and that disasters are not the great levelers they are sometimes considered to be. Close examination reveals complex variations within, and not just between, social groups broadly understood as middle- and working-class. This paper examines the intersection of gender and social class in two major flood events and argues for a more nuanced appreciation of these factors, at both the conceptual and the practical level, to be incorporated throughout the disaster process. Too often, those who are subject to the impact of disasters are conceptualised as belonging to a homogeneous group called 'victims', but this apparent similarity conceals considerable difference: difference in terms of gender, class, race/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, culture, etc. Dealing with difference represents a significant challenge for disaster managers, one that remains largely unrecognised or suppressed in favour of a sometimes spurious egalitarianism which attempts to treat everyone the same. In this sense difference ahs been problematised. However this paper argues that recognising difference in disaster is part of the solution, not the problem. Equality, inasmuch as it is consistent with social justice cannot be acheived by ignoring difficulties ; this simply reinforces the dominance of the already dominant groups (Phillips 1997: 143). Rather it will be acheived (partly) through recognizing other voices and moving to reduce marginalisation. Nevertheless, there remains a danger that an emphasis on difference, rather than a recognition and incorporation of it, will divide not unite (Harvey 1993) and may lead to a reinforcing of competition over resources. Seeking a more nuanced approach to disaster manaement should not be interpreted as an adherence to a 'faddish' political correctness nor an acceptance of post-modern critiques of grand narratives and universalizing theory. Rather, it is presented here in the context of a recognition that resilience to disaster comes often from dependence upon, and reciprocity within, small and changing networks of individuals (see Peacock et al. 1997 for similar conclusions), within and between varying social group. The recognition of these differences can lead to a redistribution, not just of resources but also of risk and exposure to harm, and to the enabling and reinforcing of coping strategies within a broader context of social justice (accepting that a universally agreed definition of that concept is problematic). However, it must also be recognised that the notion of community itself is contested and can represent exclusion as well as inclusion (Young 1990: Massey 1994

Disaster education in the UK

The seminar series brought together emergency management specialists and educationalists to explore how disaster management knowledge, innovation and education can contribute to building a culture of safety and resilience in the UK. The series was primarily focussed on ways of understanding UK disaster reduction contexts, though informed by contributions from other parts of the world. The strengthening of debate on practical and policy developments for disaster education helped exchange experiences and ideas about dealing with changing hazards and vulnerabilities. This contributed to wider and strengthened interest in disaster risk reduction engagement through associated educational needs. The series analysed conceptual, practical and policy issues surrounding UK disaster education. Institutional partners were The universities of Northumbria (lead), Glamorgan, UCL and Kyoto served as partners with significant inputs from practice institutions, including in hosting of seminars. This facilitated a rich mix of learning cultures from within and without the academy for open debate and awareness building regards learning and education in disaster reduction. There are consequent developments for further activities beyond the life of this grant, such as ongoing additional conference sessions on disaster education, an EU project, and a DFID funded disaster education and community resilience programme in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. These also feed back into the UK context. The series exposed a deeply held interest in disaster education from within the UK emergency management sector. Key conclusions were the need to develop in depth grounded learning processes, integrated institutional development and mixed qualitative and quantitative tools for the job

Gender, place and mental health recovery in disasters: addressing issues of equality and difference

UK and wider EU governments follow gender neutral policies in their disaster planning and management based upon a misconception that the gender gap has been eliminated. Findings from our quantitative and qualitative research, carried out as a part of an EU Project, ‘MICRODIS’, in two flood affected locations in England (Tewkesbury floods of 2007, and Morpeth floods of 2008), challenges this notion, revealing that disasters can have paradoxically equal and yet differentiated gendered impacts. Our findings highlight some of the more subtle ways that disasters differentially impacted women and men. It shows that although the degree of mental health recovery of affected men and women was mostly equal, they mobilised different recovery strategies, mostly consistent with their traditional gendered norms and socially constructed roles. Women's recovery strategies were mainly aligned with emotional notions of care, while men's were with notions of control. These findings also show that gendered identities, home-neighbourhood place attachment, and mental wellbeing are related in complex ways. Temporary displacement from their home-neighbourhood places after floods were traumatic for both men and women, although there were perceptible differences in this experience. The paper concludes that gender difference in disasters is ubiquitous globally, and thus analyses must include a gender and diversity analysis and ask more probing gender questions, even in apparently gender equal societies, in order to uncover sometimes hidden impacts

Cultures of entitlement and social protection: Evidence from flood prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India

Sen’s entitlement thesis rooted in social contract theory has been used to explain access to food, and is used by states to design social protection programs as transfer entitlements to diffuse food insecurities. Social protection programs have now burgeoned in several countries as a strategy to enable the poor to overcome risks, vulnerabilities and poverty. These social protection programs have inclusion and exclusion errors, which current theorization attributes mainly to political clientalism, social vulnerability, elite capture, targeting inefficiency, leakages and corruption, lack of information transparency and improper designing of social protection programs. This paper argues that the errors are due to a more fundamental assumption made in application of social contract and entitlement-based approach to social protection programing. It identifies an uncritical application of Sen’s entitlement thesis to social protection programs, as leading to inclusion and exclusion errors. The main problematic, the paper shows is that the social contract-led entitlement thesis works within the domain of formal rights situated within the state-citizen relations, and as such, misses out on the non-formal entitlements and non-state influences that impact materialization of social protection programs in practice. Evidences from flood prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India indicate that non-state rules linked with clientele and patronage relations, moral and local political economies trump over formal rights to mediate social protection entitlement outcomes. Rather than abstract state-citizen social contract, it is the moral contracts of reciprocal exchanges with influential patrons embedded in the moral economy of the villages that ultimately ground the social protection entitlement claims of poor villagers. Conceptualizing this process of access as cultures of entitlement, the paper builds a framework for reinterpretation of entitlements and their outcomes, suggesting a recalibration of application of Sen’s entitlement thesis to social protection programs. In conclusion it argues that Sen’s entitlement thesis which is pitched at transfer of economic resources through social protection from the state to the poor is inadequate. Learning from social movements currently leading the transparency and accountability struggles in India, it calls for an instituting and recognition of accountability as new cultural resource and entitlement. In conclusion it argues that information, and accountability as new cultural entitlements, when mobilized through collective agency of the poor can potentially challenge the current cultures of entitlements evidenced in this paper that presently underlie social protection outcomes

Alternatives for sustained disaster risk reduction

The daily media is filled with images of catastrophic events which seem increasingly frequent and violent In parallel there are a large range of scientific studies debates in the policy arena, and a growing number of international institutions focused on disaster reduction. But a paradox remains that despite advances in technology, disasters continue to increase, affecting many individuals in rich as well as poor countries

Do Women in Nepal Like Playing a Mobile Game? MANTRA: A Mobile Gamified App for Improving Healthcare Seeking Behavior in Rural Nepal

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