Pacific: Community involvement essential to limit impact of disasters

The Pacific has had more than its fair share of earthquakes, cyclones, tsunami's and volcanic eruptions. A recently-released study, funded by the Australian government's development agency, AusAid, looks at how to minimise the impact of these events on communities. The study uses Samoa and Fiji as case studies, and the first of a series of workshops to present the findings has taken place in Suva.

An interview with Anna Gero, Research Associate, University of New South Wales and co-author, 'Integrating participatory disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation to enhance community resilience in the Pacific: Case studies from Fiji and Samoa.' 


Presenter: Geraldine Coutts

GERO: The current status of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in the Pacific and globally, it's quite complex. There are many actors and agents and stakeholders involved, particularly with climate change since it's such a growing area of concern in the Pacific.

COUTTS: Are you saying there are too many?

GERO: No, no, not at all, I'm not saying there's too many. We're just saying that there are so many that it's hard to know who's who and what's going on and for agents to work together and to collaborate it's quite a difficult task to navigate through the field of practitioners.

COUTTS: So what are your recommendations then to overcome that?

GERO: To be aware and to open the channels of communication particularly between the disaster risk reduction community and the climate change adaptation community. They remain quite separate and so we would really encourage open dialogue between them and good relationship-building too.

COUTTS: And what are some of the solutions though to improve these areas?

GERO: Well as I think, say building good relationships from the outset...

COUTTS: But I'm just wondering more practically. For instance we've heard a lot about the use of mobile phones to get alerts out and get people prepared when there's immediate danger, but leading up to that what kind of practical things can people do?

GERO: Sure, I think improving the risk reduction measures within the community, and we found that through a lot of our case studies there's been a lot of incorporation of traditional responses and local coping mechanisms.

COUTTS: Can you explain that?

GERO: There's a lot of knowledge within communities. Communities have been long adapting and coping with disasters over the centuries, so there's a lot of ways communities deal with disasters. For example traditional food preservation measures in Samoa. They've sort of in some ways we've found, they've fallen by the wayside but there's still a lot of knowledge there. So burying food in times of coming up to cyclones and that kind of thing to preserve food for when there's no electricity, that kind of thing.

COUTTS: Ok and so you used Fiji and Samoa as we mentioned in the intro. What are the specifics of those studies in both those countries?

GERO: Sure. We would have loved to look at the whole Pacific, but it was just a one-year research project so we sort of decided to hone in on those two countries. Fiji because it's sort of the central hub for the Pacific. There's a lot of head offices for agencies so we're able to get a lot of really good information through interviews. And Samoa because it's a smaller country, it presents different challenges and also there's a lot of capacity there and some fantastic projects that we were able to look into.

COUTTS: So using the information you gathered from this study how can you use it to enhance the community resilience in the Pacific for the future?

GERO: That's a really good question. We think there is actually already a lot of really good work coming out of the Pacific, and we would really recommend sharing those lessons learned, both the good and the bad, what works and what doesn't.

COUTTS: Can you give us an example of both, what does and what doesn't work?

GERO: Sure. I think what does work is really adapting projects to the local needs and capacity. For example there's a project in Samoa, the community-based adaptation project, which is sort of implemented by the United Nations Development Program, and they've gone to great lengths to really adapt to the local government structures, so really understanding the Chiefly system and with workshops everything's run in Samoan, so the community really understand and feel that they own that project.

COUTTS: Has there been issues of trust between the government, the community and perhaps agencies that are coming into supposedly help?

GERO: Yeah that's another really good question and we found that when projects are locally adapted, those issues of trust are minimised. If a project comes in by outsiders and just implements the project disregarding the local culture, that's where things sort of fall flat, and most projects we looked at didn't do that, which is great, and they really understood the local needs and also the local capacity within the community.

COUTTS: So where do you go to from here? Is that the end of it or are you moving on still?

GERO: Through our research report and our launch we've developed some activities to try and help our agents and stakeholders to really understand what our recommendations and findings have been. So we presented those activities yesterday in Suva and we'll do the same on Wednesday in Samoa, and we hope that those activities will be picked up by agencies that are looking to develop community . . . .

COUTTS: What kind of agencies, just briefly?

GERO: Yep from the donor community, so say AusAid; the development partners, UN agencies, SOPAC and SPREP in the Pacific, Red Cross who are already doing a fantastic job; and even local non-government organisations, we hope can gain something from this too. © ABC