TSUNAMI update
18 MONTHS LATER
What has happened where people have been at the center of the reconstruction process?
SECURING LAND TENURE THAT WAS THREATENED
A year and a half has now passed since the Asian tsunami hit 3,300 coastal settlements with waves the height of a coconut tree and the force of a bomb, killing some 350,000 people and leaving another 2.5 million homeless. In Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, there are considerable differences in the degree to which things have returned to normal after the disaster. But in all these countries, there are stories which describe how in many different ways, the communities which bore the brunt of the killer waves have taken charge of rebuilding their own lives and settlements.
In the conventional relief formula, all kinds of agencies descend upon the disaster scene, all with their separate objectives, styles of working and time frames, with very little coordination. All their efforts may come with the best of intentions, but more often than not, they create additional troubles for the survivors, instilling as they do a culture of passive dependency. In this formula, the victims of calamities are considered to be helpless “target populations”, and rehabilitation is something that is to be done for them, not by them.
It turns out that ordinary people – even those most badly traumatized – are not so helpless after all. When space is created for them to come together as communities and to take a central role in all aspects of reviving their lives and settlements, the quality of that rehabilitation is inevitably much higher, more appropriate, more efficient, more inexpensive. And when this happens, rehabilitation becomes just step one in a long, long process of development, in which communities reclaim their collective capacity to solve whatever serious problems come their way, and keep growing. It’s no ghoulish claim to say that disaster rehabilitation can be an opportunity.
There is much in these people’s stories that is worthy of careful examination and discussion, so their lessons can be learned from and passed on to other disaster situations, and so that policies which support people-driven rehabilitation can be mainstreamed. Especially as the earthquakes, mud-slides and hurricanes mount up around the globe, each dragging along its train of goof-ups, scandals, manipulations and tragically misdirected resources. In this brochure, we take a very brief look at how some of the initiatives, that were described in ACHR’s August 2005 tsunami newsletter, are going.
Instead of waiting for anybody’s permission, indigenous communities have been going back after the tsunami and rebuilding their settlements - with or without title papers. For many, this is an obvious response to a visceral need to reclaim their own land. But when others dispute their rights to that land, going back can be a powerful negotiating move.
REBUILDING COMMUNITIES THAT WERE DESTROYED
The tsunami is bringing fishing communities all over Asia into a new understanding of what they are capable of - especially when they put their heads and hands together in the enormous task of rebuilding villages that were almost completely wiped away by the waves, and doing so in ways that revive long traditions of gently occupying their fragile coastal environments.
RESTORING LIVELIHOODS THAT WERE WIPED OUT
For hard-working people used to doing for themselves, the loss of the means of earning a living after a calamity like the tsunami can be one of the most galling of all losses, and the livelihood projects being supported by community loan funds and savings group federations are tackling
REVIVING CULTURES THAT WERE DISAPPEARING
The waves were not the only thing that threatened the ways of life in Asia’s coastal fishing communities. Tourism, development, market forces and globalization have all taken their toll on the delicate and richly varied indigenous cultures that still exist and that many groups are