rebuilding communities after disasters: lessons from the tsunami disaster in sri lanka

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Rebuilding Communities after Disasters: Lessons from the Tsunami Disaster in Sri Lanka Martin Mulligan RMIT University Abstract Disaster management literature is inundated with rhetoric about community participationor community-led recovery, yet the studies on how to achieve this have been unconvincing, displaying a shallow understanding of what commu- nitymeans. Development scholars often argue that better preparation for extreme eventscan prevent them from becoming disasters, but a string of recent disasters from Haiti to Japan reminds us that the world community will continue to be called on to help rebuild shattered communities. This article reects the ndings of a major study of social recovery from the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka that set out to identify and analyse examples of good practice with regard to community-led recovery. It aims to elaborate what a community development approach to disaster recovery might look like as part of a more deliberativeand patient approach to long-term social recovery. Policy Implications Disaster response agencies need a much more sophisticated understanding of community participation and engagement. A specialist UN agency should be set up to promote and co-ordinate better practice in post-disaster social recover. The specialist UN agency should be given responsibility for creating an accessible repository of well-researched and well-communicated materials focusing on post-disaster social recovery strategies and practices. Ben Wisner (2001, 2003) is prominent among develop- ment scholars who have argued that the world has been slow to learn from past experiences in managing cata- strophic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis, hurri- canes and cyclones, volcanic eruptions and wild res. He noted, for example, that El Salvador beneted from a large injection of international aid for disaster manage- ment in the wake of the damage wrought across Central America by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, yet nothing had been done to reduce the vulnerability of poor people and communities before earthquakes struck the country in 2001 (Wisner, 2001). Subsequently Telford and Cos- grave noted that the global response to the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 showed that the capacity to deliver fast and effective relief and to rebuild damaged infrastructure has improved, but the capacity to put affected communities in the driving seatof their own recovery has not (Telford and Cosgrave, 2007, p. 27). Despite all the rhetoric about taking the opportunity to build back betterin the wake of the tsunami (Clinton, 2006), familiar weaknesses were apparent in terms of inequitable distribution of aid (Hyndman, 2009; De Silva, 2009; Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012), failure to attend to the special needs of women and children (Thurnheer, 2009; Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012) and a failure to ensure that all the people relocated into temporary accommodationwere appropriately rehoused within a reasonable period of time (Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012). Whereas the tsunami disaster led to a meaningful resolution to a long-running civil war in Aceh, Indonesia (Masyrafah and McKeon, 2008), the opportunity to resolve the civil war in Sri Lanka was missed (Mulligan and Buddhadasa, 2006; Khasalamwa, 2009); a combina- tion of inequity and insensitivity in the delivery of aid exacerbated inter-ethnic tensions in parts of Sri Lanka (De Silva, 2009; McGilvray and Gamburd, 2010). In the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, a heightened sense of civic solidarity can open opportuni- ties to address pre-existing social divisions and vulnera- bilities (Khasalamwa, 2009) but if that opportunity is missed the difcult recovery is likely to exacerbate pre-existing tensions and divisions (Khasalamwa, 2009; © 2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2013) 4:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12038 Global Policy Volume 4 . Issue 3 . September 2013 278 Research Article

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Rebuilding Communities after Disasters:Lessons from the Tsunami Disaster inSri Lanka

Martin MulliganRMIT University

AbstractDisaster management literature is inundated with rhetoric about ‘community participation’ or ‘community-led recovery’,yet the studies on how to achieve this have been unconvincing, displaying a shallow understanding of what ‘commu-nity’ means. Development scholars often argue that better preparation for ‘extreme events’ can prevent them frombecoming ‘disasters’, but a string of recent disasters – from Haiti to Japan – reminds us that the world community willcontinue to be called on to help rebuild shattered communities. This article reflects the findings of a major study ofsocial recovery from the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka that set out to identify and analyse examples of good practice withregard to community-led recovery. It aims to elaborate what a community development approach to disaster recoverymight look like as part of a more ‘deliberative’ and patient approach to long-term social recovery.

Policy Implications• Disaster response agencies need a much more sophisticated understanding of community participation and

engagement.• A specialist UN agency should be set up to promote and co-ordinate better practice in post-disaster social recover.

The specialist UN agency should be given responsibility for creating an accessible repository of well-researched andwell-communicated materials focusing on post-disaster social recovery strategies and practices.

Ben Wisner (2001, 2003) is prominent among develop-ment scholars who have argued that the world has beenslow to learn from past experiences in managing cata-strophic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis, hurri-canes and cyclones, volcanic eruptions and wild fires. Henoted, for example, that El Salvador benefited from alarge injection of international aid for disaster manage-ment in the wake of the damage wrought across CentralAmerica by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, yet nothing hadbeen done to reduce the vulnerability of poor peopleand communities before earthquakes struck the countryin 2001 (Wisner, 2001). Subsequently Telford and Cos-grave noted that the global response to the IndianOcean tsunami of December 2004 showed that thecapacity to deliver fast and effective relief and to rebuilddamaged infrastructure has improved, but the capacityto put affected communities ‘in the driving seat’ of theirown recovery has not (Telford and Cosgrave, 2007, p.27). Despite all the rhetoric about taking the opportunityto ‘build back better’ in the wake of the tsunami (Clinton,2006), familiar weaknesses were apparent in terms of

inequitable distribution of aid (Hyndman, 2009; De Silva,2009; Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012), failure to attend tothe special needs of women and children (Thurnheer,2009; Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012) and a failure toensure that all the people relocated into ‘temporaryaccommodation’ were appropriately rehoused within areasonable period of time (Mulligan and Nadarajah,2012). Whereas the tsunami disaster led to a meaningfulresolution to a long-running civil war in Aceh, Indonesia(Masyrafah and McKeon, 2008), the opportunity toresolve the civil war in Sri Lanka was missed (Mulliganand Buddhadasa, 2006; Khasalamwa, 2009); a combina-tion of inequity and insensitivity in the delivery of aidexacerbated inter-ethnic tensions in parts of Sri Lanka(De Silva, 2009; McGilvray and Gamburd, 2010).

In the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, aheightened sense of civic solidarity can open opportuni-ties to address pre-existing social divisions and vulnera-bilities (Khasalamwa, 2009) but if that opportunity ismissed the difficult recovery is likely to exacerbatepre-existing tensions and divisions (Khasalamwa, 2009;

© 2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2013) 4:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12038

Global Policy Volume 4 . Issue 3 . September 2013278

Research

Article

Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012). Even if we can assumegoodwill with regard to a desire to ‘build back better’,long-term social recovery for deeply traumatised peopleand communities is much harder to achieve than therepair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure. This iswhere the lessons of past experiences prove to be partic-ularly illustrative. This article aims to tease out lessonslearnt from post-tsunami recovery work in Sri Lankaabout the sensitive and painstaking work of rehabilitatingtraumatised communities.

Wisner insists that there is no such thing as a ‘naturaldisaster’ because ‘careful authors distinguish betweenthe trigger event, or hazard, and its consequences’(Wisner, 2003, p. 135). ‘Extreme events’ become disasters,he argues, when they take place ‘in a context of vulnera-bility and exposure’ (Wisner, 2003, p. 136) with severeconsequences for people and communities with fewresources yet high levels of exposure. Much more shouldbe done, his argument continues, to reduce hazard expo-sure and vulnerability before extreme events occur. Wis-ner is encouraged by his observation that ‘[d]uring the1990s the conceptual apparatus and rhetoric of develop-ment and disaster risk reduction have largely merged’(Wisner, 2003, p. 144). Kozul-Wright et al. have extrapo-lated from this to suggest that extreme events – such asthe 2010 earthquake in Haiti – could become the triggerfor a Marshall-Plan-like development intervention aimedat strengthening the state within nations that may havesuffered from years of ‘kleptocratic mismanagement’(Kozul-Wright et al., 2012, p. 13). More modestly, AndrewMaskrey (2011) has argued that community planning hasalready had some success in reducing risk exposure.

While there is little doubt that much more could, andshould, be done to reduce hazard exposure, the sugges-tion that extreme events only trigger disasters when thepreparation is inadequate is very hard to sustain whenextreme events continue to strike with alarming fre-quency in countries ranging from Haiti and Pakistan toJapan and New Zealand. The 2011 tsunami and associ-ated nuclear reactor disaster in Japan and the massiveearthquakes that flattened much of the New Zealand cityof Christchurch in the same year highlighted the fact thatnatural disasters can have rather random effects andconsequences. While the Japanese experience remindedus that it is not possible to draw a sharp distinctionbetween natural catastrophes and human-induced disas-ters, we need to keep in mind that natural disasters canstrike almost anywhere at any time, and that affectedcommunities will often need external assistance torecover. Here again we can turn to the post-tsunamiexperience in Sri Lanka to tease out lessons about theeffective deployment of global disaster responsecapacities.

The unprecedented global reaction to the IndianOcean tsunami of 2004 seemed to reflect anxiety over

the fact that unexpected catastrophes can strike almostanywhere at any time (Telford and Cosgrave, 2007) andyet there have been so many natural disasters in the per-iod since that memories of the tsunami have largelyfaded away. Few of these disasters can be linked directlyto the onset of global climate change and yet climatescientists are warning the world that climate change willresult in the increased frequency and intensity ofextreme weather events. Recent experiences and futurepredictions conspire to tell us that vulnerability to naturaldisasters has become much more diffuse and widespreadthan ever before, and that no amount of planning andpreparation can prevent catastrophic events from turninginto disasters. It has become imperative to create anaccessible repository of well-researched materials thatcan help disaster management practitioners learn frompast experiences with regard to post-disaster socialrecovery, noting that an increase in the frequency andintensity of extreme weather events is likely to drawmany more people into disaster management work.

1. Focusing on the Sri Lankan experience

I was a lead investigator on a major study for the Austra-lian relief and aid agency AusAID on lessons to be learntfrom post-tsunami relief and recovery operations in SriLanka and Southern India (Mulligan et al., 2012; Mulliganand Nadarajah, 2012). This study focused on what couldbe learnt from efforts to rebuild household livelihoodsand traumatised communities, particularly when therecovery operations involved relocation away from placeswhere the people had previously lived in order to reducehazard exposure. The study was carried out in four casestudy areas spread around the coast of Sri Lanka and inan area in metropolitan Chennai where fishing communi-ties were relocated away from their coastal shanty townsinto ‘more suitable’ housing settlements (see Table 1). Ittook place over a period of four years and employed amix of quantitative and qualitative social research meth-ods – including household surveys, community memberprofiles, semi-structured interviews and the collectionand analysis of stories. In each case study area theresearch team compiled a sociocultural profile of thelocal and regional communities in order to contextualisethe research findings and enable comparative analysis. Inpart, the study aimed to develop a deeper understandingof the kinds of weaknesses in the relief and recoveryoperations that were easy to identify and were noted ina wide range of more limited studies (e.g. Domroes,2005; Steele, 2005; Hettige, 2007; Ruwanpura, 2009).However, the study also aimed to identify and analyseexamples of good practice in social recovery workbecause it is too easy to simply point fingers of blame atthose involved in such long and difficult work. Althoughthe study included tsunami-affected communities in

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Chennai, this article focuses on the Sri Lankan experiencebecause we were able to explore and compare a widearray of local experiences.

It is, of course, easy to abuse the rhetoric of ‘buildback better’, and many commentators have noted thatinclusive strategies for rebuilding tsunami-affected com-munities in Sri Lanka were undermined by politicalopportunism or divisive political agendas (e.g. Hyndman,2009; Mulligan and Shaw, 2007). There can be littledoubt that the Sri Lankan state and public sector lackedthe capacity to properly coordinate the massive reliefand recovery effort and ensure that the international aidmoney was well used (Mulligan and Shaw, 2007). Thisadds weight to Wisner’s argument that induced disastersbecome even worse when the nation states concernedare either weak and undemocratic or otherwisecommitted to divisive neoliberal social and economicdevelopment policies (Wisner, 2001, 2003). My own studyalso had little difficulty confirming fears that many aidagencies wasted the funding they had received by actingwith too much haste and with inadequate communityconsultation (Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012). However, itneeds to be remembered that it is very hard to workeffectively in the midst of the chaos and despair that fol-lows a major catastrophe, and that those who volunteerto do this kind of work generally have much betterintentions and motivations than many commentatorsacknowledge. A French aid worker, Philippe Fabry, toldme that public criticism of disaster relief agencies oftenreflects an impatience to get the job done when it maybe important to take time to ensure that the survivorsare not simply put into new houses in empty fields butrather placed in well-planned settlements that will stillbe working well ten or 20 years later.

Fabry’s suggestion that post-disaster resettlementneeds to be more deliberative and less hasty is sup-ported by my study findings, and this idea will beexplored further in this article. My study also showedthat strategies for rebuilding household livelihoods needto be linked to wider economic development strategiesthat can create a better environment for secure employ-ment or income generation activities (Shaw, 2010). Thissuggests, then, that the key words for effective socialrecovery are deliberation and integration. However, thisarticle will focus particularly on the lessons of the post-tsunami experience for strategies aimed at rebuildingshattered and traumatised communities because muchof the rhetoric in disaster management literature aboutthe importance of ‘community participation’ is no moreconvincing than the more recent rhetoric about ‘buildback better’. A community development approach topost-disaster recovery may give substance to the rhetoricof ‘build back better’. However, disaster-affected peopleand communities cannot forget their losses and socialinclusion can be encouraged but never imposed or engi-neered. This article will suggest that community forma-tion is a process without end; nevertheless, there areclear lessons to be learnt from the examples of goodpractice that we were able to identify and analyse.

2. Getting beyond the rhetoric aboutcommunity ‘engagement’

International literature on disaster management isinfused with rhetoric about ensuring that affected com-munities can participate fully in relief and recoveryefforts (see, for example, Lizerralde et al., 2009; Telfordand Cosgrave, 2007). On the one hand, this involves an

Table 1. Key characteristics of the study sites

Study site Key characteristics

Seenigama,southwestSri Lanka

A cluster of villages located near the regional centre of Galle and on the outskirts of a popular tourist town,Hikkaduwa. Located near an historic Buddhist temple. Almost entirely Sinhalese Buddhist.

UrbanHambantota

An old settlement at the heart of the Hambantota district in southeast Sri Lanka, renowned for its fishingharbour, major salt industry, nearby national parks and a temple that attracts both Buddhist and Hindupilgrims. Located on the ancient ‘Silk Road of the Sea’, at the time of the tsunami the population was nearlyhalf Tamil-speaking Muslim and half Sinhalese Buddhist.

Thirukkovil A large settlement in the Ampara district in eastern Sri Lanka, clustered around an ancient Hindu temple. Badlyaffected by the civil war in Sri Lanka. Almost all of the population is Tamil-speaking Hindu. The study focusedon relocated communities, settled some three to four kilometres from the old town.

Sainthamaruthu A densely packed settlement in the Ampara district of eastern Sri Lanka, built on a fairly narrow strip of coastalland and adjacent to an ancient and important Muslim mosque. Community almost entirely Tamil-speakingMuslim. Very severely impacted by the tsunami.

NorthernChennai

People from eight devastated coastal ‘shanty towns’ were first relocated into two successive temporarysettlements and then into two adjacent permanent settlements, several kilometres from the sea.Predominantly low-caste Hindu people who had depended on fishing for their livelihoods.

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emphasis on encouraging local communities to put inplace disaster management plans before a disasterarrives; Andrew Maskrey of the UN Strategy for DisasterReduction – who coined the term ‘community-baseddisaster risk management’ (CBDRM) in 1984 – has arguedrecently that local community plans have proven benefi-cial (Maskrey, 2011). On the other hand, it is commonlyargued that community participation is essential forensuring that post-disaster relief and recovery operationsdeliver what ‘the community’ needs (e.g. Lizzeralde et al.,2009; Lyons et al., 2010).

The problem with the rhetoric is that it tends to bebased on shallow understandings of what the word com-munity means in the contemporary world; claims for thebenefits of community participation are often based on‘research’ that is self-referential in the way that ‘evidence’is gathered to support starting assumptions. The mean-ing of the word community has divided western sociolo-gists ever since Emile Durkheim took exception to thefamous book on the topic by his contemporary Ferdi-nand Tonnies, published in German under the titleGemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in 1887 (Aldous, 1972).Durkheim felt that Tonnies’ ideas about the persistenceof community in the wake of Europe’s second IndustrialRevolution had become nostalgic and outdated for grow-ing numbers of people living in cities. Critics of commu-nity continued to voice their concerns over thesubsequent years, reaching something of a crescendo inthe early1990s when a wide range of scholars concludedthat globalisation had sounded the final death knell forany meaningful experience of community in the way ithad been understood previously (Young, 1990; Bauman,1993; Hobsbawm, 1998). However, the anthropologistAnthony Cohen (1985) had already made the importantobservation that the idea of community needs to beunderstood for its symbolic importance, as much as ithas material relevance; he suggested that the persistentdesire for community is a phenomenon that needs to beunderstood rather than decried.

Noting that social transformations of the late 20th cen-tury seemed to be increasing the desire for communityglobally, Nikolas Rose (1996, 1999) suggested that thisreflected a growing realisation that neither society northe state of the ‘modern’ era had been able to deliverthe kind of security that people crave. Bauman (2001)softened his earlier critique of community to suggestthat the search for community was an understandableresponse to the uncertainties of what he called ‘liquidmodernity’. Meanwhile Gerard Delanty built on the workof Rose to argue that ‘community is relevant todaybecause, on the one hand, the fragmentation of societyhas provoked a worldwide search for community while,on the other … cultural developments and global formsof communication have facilitated the construction ofcommunity’ (Delanty, 2003, p. 193).

Of course, it can be argued that community continuesto have a different and more obvious meaning in socie-ties such as Sri Lanka than in the west. However, Delantywent back to the ways in which the ancient Greeks usedthe word koinonia to talk about ways of belonging thatoperate at the level of the local and particular and alsoat the level of the universal human community (Delanty,2003, p. 12); he also suggested that similar notions ofcommunity can be found in the Confucian tradition ofChina and in ancient social and religious thought in India(p. 14). This prompted Delanty to conclude that commu-nity ‘exerts itself as a powerful idea of belonging in everyage’ (p. 11), and he suggests that community is betterunderstood as an aspiration that can never be fully rea-lised rather than as a particular social structure in a par-ticular society.

Working in Sri Lanka, I found that the English word‘community’ does not translate readily into either Sinhalaor Tamil, and yet it was not difficult to find equivalentconcepts and words that could provoke a conversationabout belonging or not belonging. Of course, modernisa-tion and globalisation have had destabilising effects onlocal communities everywhere, with many Sri Lankansmoving to – or travelling to – urban centres for work orspending time working in the Middle East or other partsof the world. Sri Lankan households commonly learnabout the wider world by watching Indian television dra-mas or global news reports on their televisions; few arewithout mobile phones to keep in touch with a wide cir-cle of friends and associates, many of them living inother parts of the country. Even the most remote Sri Lan-kan communities are influenced by global flows of peo-ple and ideas. Of course there are older and deepercultural and religious beliefs that influence the ways inwhich Sri Lankans think about their identity and belong-ing, yet stable communities are not the ‘given’ theymight have been in earlier times. Like westerners, SriLankans may only experience community when it is‘wilfully constructed’ (Delanty, 2003, p. 130).

A dynamic conception of community formation is notreflected in disaster management literature, where rathersimplistic and one-dimensional conceptions of ‘the com-munity’ still prevail. Furthermore, while lip service is oftengiven to the timely warning by Cooke and Kothari (2001)that ‘community participation’ can turn into a new kindof ‘tyranny’ for those it aims to benefit, key assumptionsabout what it might mean in practice are rarely interro-gated. The literature tends to have a technical tone andis full of acronyms such as CDD (community-drivendevelopment), PCR (people-centred reconstruction), andODR (owner-driven reconstruction). This probably reflectsthe fact that disaster recovery work tends to be domi-nated by people with expertise in fields such as engi-neering, construction, architecture and planning. Whilethere has been a growing number of important cultural

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and political critiques of disaster management strategies(e.g. Hyndman, 2007; McGilvray and Gamburd, 2010; Ko-zul-Wright et al., 2012), the practice still shows little influ-ence of political or social theory. For example, aninstrumental approach to rebuilding community hasgiven rise to the assumption that ‘people-centred hous-ing reconstruction’ can create community (Lyons, 2010,pp. 55–57) rather than thinking about the complex hous-ing needs of multilayered local communities that haveexperienced major trauma and continue to undergotransformations of various kinds.

3. The dark side of community

It is also important to remember that community is notalways a pleasant experience for those involved. Inthinking about the origins and evolution of ideas aboutcommunity, Delanty (2003) and Esposito (2010) haveboth concluded that it is about loss and absence asmuch as it is about finding a secure sense of belonging.In looking at the etymology of the Latin word commun-itas, Esposito notes that it is ‘not only to be identifiedwith the rea publica, the ‘common thing’, but rather it isthe hole into which the common thing continually risksfalling’ (Esposito, 2010, p. 8). This gives the search forcommunity a rather desperate edge and it helps toexplain why feelings about community are often emo-tionally charged. Shallow or narrow projections of com-munity identity can create insiders and outsiders orotherwise open up the kinds of divisions that have esca-lated into communal violence in countries ranging fromRwanda and Bosnia to India and Sri Lanka. In examiningthe upsurge of anti-Muslim violence that swept throughthe Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, Manoj Jha noted thatstories of past humiliation can become ‘chosen traumas’that then become ‘psychologised’ and ‘mythologised’ tobecome the ‘markers of identity’ (Jha, 2010, p. 318) –leading to intergenerational division.

The extent to which an influx of aid can open up pre-existing fault lines in disaster-affected communities mustbe a major consideration for aid workers. As Khasalamwa(2009) has noted, the people who suffer most in a naturaldisaster are often those who are already vulnerable withregard to their exposure to risk and in their capacity torespond to setbacks. This leads her to suggest that thereis a ‘geography of vulnerability’, which is not the samething as a ‘geography of hazard’ (Khasalamwa, 2009, p.73). This was reflected in the fact that the 2004 tsunamiwas particularly devastating for communities of peoplewho were living adjacent to the sea so that they couldfind work as day labourers in the fishing industry, withmany such people living in shacks and shanty towns.Such people face a daily struggle for survival, and whenaid begins to flow it is not surprising that they competewith others to get what they can. As Siri Hettige put it:

Affected families … use whatever social andpolitical connections they have to achieve theirindividual objectives. Given the fact that somefamilies are more connected to social and politi-cal networks than others, any competitionamong households to secure external assistancetends to result in unequal access to resources.This naturally leads to jealousies, disparities,frustrations and even conflicts (Hettige, 2007,p. 10).

The potential for aid to open up dangerous divisionswithin affected communities is made worse in countrieslike Sri Lanka, where ethnic and religious differenceshave been sharply contested with regard to nationalidentity. The tsunami struck parts of Sri Lanka where vio-lent conflict between Tamil separatists and the armedforces loyal to a national government dominated by rep-resentatives of the Sinhalese majority had been eruptingperiodically for more than 20 years. Initial hopes that thetsunami disaster might lead to a resolution of the civilwar were strengthened by the signing of a Post-TsunamiOperational Management Structure (P-TOMS) agreementbetween the government and the leaders of the separat-ist movement. However, the P-TOMS agreement col-lapsed before it could be implemented (Khasalamwa,2009) and foreign aid continued to flow much moreheavily towards the Sinhalese-dominated southern prov-ince compared to the tsunami-affected areas of the eastand northeast populated mainly by Tamil-speaking Hin-dus or Tamil-speaking Muslims (Hyndman, 2009). The col-lapse of the agreement meant that little aid reachedtsunami-affected communities in the north that wereunder the control of the Tamil separatists. However, arange of studies also found that Tamil-speaking Muslimcommunities in the southeastern Ampara district also feltexcluded (Hyndman, 2009; McGilvray and Gamburd,2010; Mulligan and Buddhadasa, 2012).

Whereas coastal communities in the Ampara districtwere largely separated into ethnic/religious enclaves, thetsunami-affected community at Hambantota in southernSri Lanka was evenly divided between Tamil-speakingMuslims and Sinhalese Buddhists. Hambantota did partic-ularly well with regard to the allocation of external aidbecause it was the power base of the man who movedfrom being prime minister to national president duringthe times of relief and recovery – Mahinda Rajapakse.However, several decisions related to reconstruction – e.g.the allocation of houses in the ‘new town’– threatened todrive a wedge between the two communities beforecommunity leaders stepped in to prevent this happening.

Relief and aid workers who enter the field with a shal-low understanding of what ‘the community’ means couldultimately do more harm than good. The potential forexacerbating division highlights the need for outsiders to

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work with all sections of the affected community and towork with local people who can themselves work effec-tively across the potential divisions. In keeping with theidea that a sense of community is something that needsto be wilfully constructed and that narrow and shallowprojections of community need to be contested con-stantly, the emphasis needs to shift from working withcommunity to working with people who can becomeeffective community development workers.

4. A comparison with New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina killed much fewer people in NewOrleans than the tsunami killed in Sri Lanka: about 1500compared to around 36,000. However, it destroyedaround 200,000 homes and some 80 per cent of the city’sinfrastructure, and most of the city was under water for57 days (Blakeley, 2012, p. 5). Poor black communitiesbore the brunt of the disaster, and the problems werecompounded by the fact that the city’s infrastructure wasin relatively poor shape (p. 17). Whereas the tsunamiwaves came and went quite quickly, the lingering flood-waters in New Orleans made the relief effort more diffi-cult. Nevertheless, state and federal authorities came infor public criticism for what was seen as a slow and dis-jointed relief effort. Dead bodies went uncollected fordays, there were media reports of widespread looting,and even the evacuation and relocation of the survivorswas rather chaotic (p. 17). Media commentators won-dered if the tardy response was because of the fact thatmost of the displaced people were black; Blakeley reportsthat when the business community of New Orleans setup a Bring New Orleans Back commission (BNOB), mostpeople in the black community saw it as a ‘whitey landgrab’ (p. 43). Although the federal government allocatedUS$417 million for the reconstruction of the city (p. 76),the New Orleans mayor felt obliged to bring in a relativeoutsider in Ed Blakely – an experienced US-trained townplanner who was then based in Sydney, Australia – tocoordinate the efforts of a fractured city community. Blak-ely had a background in anti-poverty work and earth-quake recovery in Oakland, California, but his mainexpertise was that of a physical planner.

A wide range of studies have now been published onpost-Katrina social recovery in New Orleans (e.g. Cham-lee-Wright and Storr, 2010; Hawkins and Mauer, 2011;Helfinger Messias et al., 2012). Chamlee-Wright and Storrtake an economistic approach to ‘community rebound’by arguing that ‘social entrepreneurship’ has helped tochannel ‘citizen action’ into the construction of a morediverse city economy. In contrast, Messias et al. (2012)suggest that the minority Latino community had to relyon their own social networks to overcome despair andisolation; Hawkins and Maurer (2011) suggest that fiveyears after the disaster, people they interviewed still felt

a strong sense of nostalgia for lost community. Hawkinsand Maurer note that the loss of community is an ‘intan-gible loss’ that is hard to replace and yet they suggestthat nostalgia for lost community reflected a deep, onto-logical insecurity that should have been better under-stood by those who came to help. As one intervieweetold the researchers, ‘you fix my community, you havefixed my life’ (Hawkins and Mauer, 2011, p. 143). In otherwords, a focus on housing and employment may not beenough to recover a sense of security.

It is interesting to read Blakely’s account of effortsmade to identify and nurture ‘civic leadership’ in thewake of the disaster. For Blakely, community-basedgroups that were formed before or after the storm weregenerally parochial, with narrowly conceived sectionalinterests (Blakely, 2012, p. 103). Race remained a signifi-cant dividing line, with black and Latino communitiesremaining suspicious of the work of the white-dominatedbusiness community (pp. 108–109). In Blakely’s account,one organisation alone – Women of the Storm – made aconscious effort to ‘forge some relationships across theranks of upper-class blacks and whites’ because women‘did not have a race agenda’ (p. 104). Blakely bemoansthe fact that New Orleans lacked the kind of civic leader-ship that served New York well in the wake of theSeptember 11 attacks (p. 106), arguing that no civic orga-nisation in New Orleans could ‘act as the central resourcefor carrying a civic vision’ (p. 101). This top-down view ofcommunity formation sees community self-interest as aproblem rather than a starting point for finding commonground and negotiating respectful coexistence.

The main problem in the approach taken by Blakelyand others is that it blurs the important distinction to bemade between community and civil society, just as Durk-heim did in his critique of Tonnies (Delanty, 2003, p. 37).An organisation like Women of the Storm is better seenas a civil society (rather than community) organisation.Here it is worth drawing on Jeffrey Alexander’s (2006)reworking of civil society theory, in that an organisationlike Women of the Storm is essentially trying to open upspace – understood as the ‘civil sphere’ by Alexander –for solidarity in the pursuit of a common good. Prevailingnotions of citizenship and civility will always be contested,Alexander argues, and there is an endless need to keepopen the civil sphere by attending to the task of ‘civilrepair’ (Alexander, 2006, pp. 205–209). From this perspec-tive, civil leadership – or the ongoing task of civil repair –can run in parallel with community formation but the twothings should not be confused with each other.

5. Finding and analysing good practice inSri Lanka

As mentioned, this article is based on a study that lookedat relief and recovery work in four diverse local commu-

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nities in Sri Lanka. It took almost a year to identify thecase study sites because the researchers were keen towork in a range of locations where community-based or-ganisations would welcome the research and providelocal research consultants and field workers. While it wasimportant to focus on places where social recovery wasvery challenging, it was also important to find examplesof good practice in the ways in which local communitieswere engaged in the work. NGOs – both local and inter-national – played the lead role in working with the disas-ter survivors, and so the examples of good practicefocused on the ways in which they took on thatresponsibility.

The researchers were able to document and analysethe following examples of good practice:

1. The work of the local NGO, Foundation of Goodness(FoG), in Seenigama. FoG was established by localman Kushil Gunasekera, who achieved success in busi-ness and sport (cricket) before returning to Seenigamato establish programmes that would give local chil-dren better opportunities in education and sport.Because FoG was already working in the local com-munity at the time of the tsunami, it was able tochannel aid and relief funds into a range of commu-nity-building programmes and initiatives.

2. The work of the highly experienced Buddhist reliefagency from Taiwan, the Tzu Chi Foundation, in Ham-bantota, which won widespread admiration within theHambantota community. Tzu Chi was remarkably effi-cient and they built community facilities as well ashouses. They designed houses that met local needsand ensured a good standard of construction.

3. The construction of a well-planned ‘model village’ inHambantota by a local NGO with links to France, SriLanka Solidarity. The guiding principle here was toconstruct a village that might be functioning well inten or 20 years rather than to put people into hastilyconstructed houses in empty paddocks.

4. The patient work of the Sri Lankan People’s Church inmoving from relief aid for a rather neglected Hinducommunity at Thirukkovil in eastern Sri Lanka throughto their oversight of the construction of a well-plannednew village at Kudilnilam outside Thirukkovil. Of partic-ular importance was the fact that the People’s Churchvolunteers started to conduct community developmentwork with the families who were allocated houses atKudilnilam long before the houses were built.

A few things are obvious from this selection of goodpractice. The first is that the FoG is a local NGO, withstrong links into the affected community, while the Peo-ple’s Church is a Sri Lankan organisation run by Sri Lan-kans. Sri Lanka Solidarity was formed by a French citizenwho had lived in Sri Lanka for some years and he was

able to use his extensive local network. The second pointis that three of the four lead agencies were motivated byreligious beliefs, which gave them an overt ethical frame-work for their work. Of these three, the Tzu Chi Founda-tion was formed in Taiwan rather than Sri Lanka but itsBuddhist philosophy worked well in a country that is sostrongly influenced by Buddhism, even if the tsunami sur-vivors at Hambantota were both Buddhist and Muslim.

Perhaps the most surprising example of good practicewas the work of the Sri Lankan People’s Church. Thechurch volunteers from Colombo – who simply loaded atruck with relief supplies and headed for the Ampara dis-trict within days of the disaster on the assumption thatless aid would reach that side of the island – had no pre-vious experience in disaster relief or recovery. Further-more, fears swept Sri Lanka that Christian groups woulduse the emergency to ‘win souls’ for their religion, and itseemed an odd match for the People’s Church to workin an entirely Hindu community. The People’s Church vol-unteers who headed for the Ampara district expected toreturn to Colombo after their mercy mission was com-pleted, but they were asked to stay on and oversee theplanning and construction of the new settlement at Ku-dilnilam. Over a period of more than four years, the Peo-ple’s Church pastors and volunteers showed enormouspatience and a willingness to listen to the people theysought to help. They won the admiration of the commu-nity. A few locals decided to join the church; however,most remained loyal to their Hindu beliefs and told theresearchers that they had come under no pressure what-soever to change their allegiances.

The work of the People’s Church suggests thatpatience and aptitude may be more important than priorexperience in working with disaster-affected communi-ties. The experienced Tzu Chi Foundation aid workers –many of them volunteers – were able to act with muchmore certainty than their counterparts in the People’sChurch. This meant, for example, that the houses built byTzu Chi were the only ones the researchers saw withkitchens that really suited the living practices of thedisaster survivors. On the other hand, Tzu Chi hasbecome such a large international organisation that itspractices have become rather institutionalised and a littleinflexible, whereas the residents of Kudilnilam felt theywere in a kind of partnership with the Colombo-basedPeople’s Church.Another thing that really stood out as good practice

was the formation of a ‘civil society committee’ in Ham-bantota to oversee the aid and recovery work and advo-cate for those in the community who seemed to bemissing out or discriminated against in some way. Thecommittee was formed by the Hambantota DistrictChamber of Commerce within days of the disaster and itmet every night for the first few months, moving to a

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weekly and then monthly meeting schedule for anotheryear. Community leaders in Hambantota were aware thatthe disaster and subsequent recovery could drive awedge between the Buddhist and Muslim communities;they made sure that the committee included all the reli-gious leaders and representatives of all the local politicalparties. As well as advocating on behalf of particular fam-ilies, the committee intervened to stop the relocation ofpeople who had lived adjacent to the sea until theycould be convinced that such relocation was in theirlong-term interests.

6. A deliberative approach to disaster recovery

The post-tsunami experience in Sri Lanka suggests thatrecovery needs to pass through several distinct phases,even if these phases overlap with each other and it isimpossible to know in advance how long each phasemight take. Obviously the immediate relief effort needsto be handled with maximum speed and efficiency inorder to address the needs of the injured and those whohave lost their homes and/or loved ones. As Cooke andKothari (2001) have noted, community participation canbe a kind of tyranny for traumatised people who are try-ing to come to terms with their losses and overcome thefear of what they have seen or experienced. Indeed,post-disaster relief is best handled by self-reliant organi-sations with logistical expertise. It is important to be verysensitive towards the religious and cultural beliefs andpractices of the people concerned in disposing of deadbodies, but in general disaster survivors need to feel safeand secure again as quickly as possible.

Problems began to emerge in Sri Lanka when peoplewere moved from relief shelters into poorly planned andhastily constructed ‘temporary’ settlements on theassumption that they would be able to move quitequickly into permanent new homes. Poor-quality tempo-rary accommodation put pressure on government bodiesand aid agencies to rush the process of planning andconstructing new permanent settlements, and the ‘mostneedy’ survivors – such as widows with children – wereoften put into new houses that were poorly constructed,with inadequate supporting infrastructure. Much morethought and care needed to go into the planning andconstruction of ‘temporary accommodation’, even if thismeant that the disaster survivors had to endure reliefshelters for longer. The People’s Church were able todemonstrate that people are prepared to be patient ifthey are convinced that short-term pain can give way tolong-term gain.

Clearly, local knowledge must play a big role inensuring that people can rebuild their social networks.Our study also showed that it is particularly importantto give disaster survivors easy access to religious cen-tres or places for worship, and local knowledge must

play a big role in ensuring that new community facili-ties match community needs. Outside agencies need toconsult community-based organisations during the reliefphase in order to ensure that aid is delivered quicklyand equitably. Even more local knowledge is needed inplanning temporary accommodation, and more still isrequired in planning and constructing permanent newsettlements.

International NGOs play a critical role in ensuring thatinternational aid reaches disaster-affected communitiesand that people with appropriate skills and expertise arebrought into play for the reconstruction and recoverywork. However, they need to be patient in finding waysto work with an array of local people and organisations,and they must start early in planning for a time whenthey will withdraw from the field. Our study found veryfew examples of good ‘transition planning’ to ensure thatprojects and programmes could be continued when thelead agency withdrew, with most of the internationalNGOs operating with an inflexible assumption that theymust withdraw within a period of two years to prevent‘aid dependency’. When they did withdraw, many fundedprojects and programmes collapsed and some poorlyplanned settlements were subsequently abandoned. It iseasy to blame the nation state for failing to ensure thatwork funded by disaster aid would have some continuity.However, a crisis as big as the tsunami disaster in SriLanka is bound to overwhelm state capacity. In such cir-cumstances, international aid organisations need to workdirectly with community-based organisations and localgovernment authorities to ensure that recovery work isnot only well targeted but has continuity.

Our research found that particular people showed anaptitude for working well within their own communitiesduring the relief phase or while people were living intemporary accommodation, and outside agencies wouldbe well advised to identify such people and give themadded responsibilities as the process moves towards per-manent resettlement. These are the people who canbecome effective community development workers. AtSeenigama, FoG founder Kushil Gunasekera noticed thata particular young man worked well in emergency shel-ters and over the next few years that young man wasgiven increasing responsibilities, up to the point wherehe was coordinating the work of more than 80 workersand volunteers. Eventually he became a permanent man-ager for FoG at Seenigama.

7. Building global disaster response capacity

The tsunami disaster provoked widespread calls in SriLanka to turn a rather fragile civil war ceasefire into amore permanent resolution of the conflict (Mulligan andBuddhadasa, 2006). Yet the early agreement between theSri Lankan government and the Tamil separatists to

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ensure the fair and transparent distribution of aid col-lapsed amid growing acrimony and the ceasefire agree-ment was effectively scuttled a year later (Khasalamwa,2009). The subsequent failure of the Sri Lankan govern-ment to ensure a reasonably equitable distribution of theinternational aid meant that the Tamil-speaking Hinducommunities along the east coast and the Tamil-speak-ing Muslims in the southeast felt excluded by their ownnation (Hyndman, 2009; McGilvray and Gamburd, 2010;Mulligan and Nadarajah, 2012). Failings on the part ofthe government made it harder for international NGOsto work in the neglected local communities. However, itis not tenable for aid agencies to decide that they canonly work in countries where the state is prepared to befair and inclusive. Humanitarian assistance cannot becontingent on the capacity or willingness of the nationstates concerned to ensure that the aid is used well andfairly. International aid agencies need to avoid allegationsof political interference in order to keep open the spaceto work directly with disaster-affected communities, yetthey can work diligently to strengthen community-basedor civil society organisations that can, in turn, exert pres-sure on their own governments to be fair and inclusive.Aid agencies have considerable bargaining power in theimmediate aftermath of a disaster in negotiating termsfor the delivery of aid, and they should not refrain fromusing this to ensure transparency and effective coordina-tion for relief and recovery operations. However, the taskof ‘civil repair’ in divided societies (Alexander, 2006, p. 7)cannot be undertaken by outsiders.

The impressive global response to the tsunami crisis of2004 provided many valuable lessons for quick and effec-tive relief work on a global scale, as documented by theTsunami Evaluation Coalition (Telford and Cosgrave,2007). This article suggests that it is more difficult toensure an effective transition from short-term relief andreconstruction to long-term social recovery, yet evenhere there are examples of good practice that can informfuture work. This article also argues that working withintraumatised communities that are just as likely to frag-ment as unite in the face of a disaster is not as easy asmany aid workers assume. It is important to identifypeople who have either the local knowledge or the apti-tude to undertake effective community developmentwork, and this important work needs to be better appre-ciated and better funded.

People who develop their skills in post-disaster com-munity development work could become part of a globaldisaster response capacity, either working in a range ofcountries or working to train others in this kind of work.A global agency – set up within the structures of the UN– could ensure that lessons learnt from past disastersabout post-disaster community development could becatalogued and disseminated and used for the develop-ment of training courses. This function might be assumed

by a UN agency with broader responsibilities for workingwith national governments on their disaster managementplans and for brokering agreements between nationstates and international aid agencies on the terms andconditions for the delivery of international aid.

The lessons learnt from the successes and failings ofthe global response to the 2004 tsunami crisis havealmost been swamped by the string of disasters thathave occurred since, and yet climate scientists are tellingus to expect more frequent and more intense extremeweather events in the years ahead. More needs to bedone to ensure that there is a greater global capacity torespond to disasters that will almost always overwhelmthe response capacity of the nations concerned. In aworld of increasing risk and uncertainty, in which therewill always be local communities recovering from somekind of disaster, the world needs more people with theaptitude and skill to carry out effective post-disastercommunity development work. Otherwise, natural disas-ters will continue to turn into social disasters with nega-tive global consequences.

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Author InformationMartin Mulligan, Associate Professor, is a Senior Researcher at theGlobalism Research Centre, School of Global, Urban and Social Stu-dies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. This paper is based onresearch conducted for AusAID, the Australian government's reliefand aid agency.

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