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This paper is to contribute to addressing the knowledge gap on the roles of rural cooperatives in disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM).

This study adopts a mixed-methods approach highlighting indigenous strategies of community engagement – the pantatabtaval/tong tongan (brainstorming and dialogs), pan-iestorya/dad-at (storytelling session) and field observations with 50 village-level cooperatives in Benguet, Philippines to understand their contributions to local DRRM.

Rural cooperatives in Benguet have evolved on their context of service from mere rural development to now include DRRM donations and aid for disaster-affected families, credit and loans are the most common services of these rural cooperative extended to their members to deal with risks of disasters.

Most research on cooperatives focuses on their contribution to socio-economic development and only few dealt with DRRM. This paper explores the link of these rural organizations with DRRM drawing evidence from cooperatives in the rural communities of Benguet, Philippines.

Enhancing the initiative and enthusiasm of emergency preparedness behaviors among Medical and Health Organization (MHO) staff is an effective measure to prevent and reduce losses from emergencies. In this study, emergency preparedness behavioral intentions were divided into noncooperative behavioral intentions (EPNCBI) and cooperative behavioral intentions (EPCBI) to discuss the impact brought by quality of life (QoL). The mediating effects of psychological capital (PsyCap) and perceived organizational support (POS) were also considered.

A web-based questionnaire was used for MHO staff in China, and a structural equation analysis of the data collected from 243 participants was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results reveal that: (1) QoL had a positive effect on EPNCBI, PsyCap and POS; (2) PsyCap had a positive effect on EPNCBI and EPCBI; (3) POS had a positive effect on PsyCap and EPCBI; (4) PsyCap mediated the relationship between QoL and EPNCBI, and the relationship between POS and EPNCBI; (5) PsyCap and POS mediated the relationship between QoL and EPCBI.

Improving MHO staff’s QoL is an effective way to enhance positive behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, these findings could provide managers with valuable insight focusing their limited resources on enhancing the emergency preparedness of MHO staff by reinforcing the level of PsyCap and POS.

This study provides important updated considerations for the application of positive psychology in the field of emergency preparedness.

The purpose of this paper is to review the housing sector of Turkey and present the housing development strategies developed by government enterprises for the urban poor in Turkey as successful examples.

The methodology of the paper is descriptive. First of all, the literature on housing finance systems and sources of housing finance are stated. Then, the paper reviews housing finance systems applied in Turkey in the past to solve housing problems. Later, it describes current housing strategy to solve housing problems of low- and middle-income groups and also presents this strategy as a successful model to other countries. Moreover, mortgage law and the current situation of the Turkish housing sector are discussed within the study.

As a result of economic normalization achieved after 2002, mortgage loans extended by commercial banks have increased in Turkey. Besides, governmental institutions, such as Housing Development Administration of Turkey (HDAT) and Istanbul Public Housing Corporation (KIPTAS), apply very extensive projects to allow low- and middle-income groups to have their dwellings. In 2007, the Turkish Parliament enacted mortgage law and defined rules and actors of the mortgage sector. However, as a consequence of economic deterioration in the world economy, mortgage loan receivables-backed securities could not be issued to public yet. Public issuance of mortgage loan receivables-backed securities in the future are expected to direct more long-term funds to the housing sector and also to provide an additional investment instrument for the individual and institutional investors.

The housing production and finance models developed by the HDAT and KIPTAS can be good models for the solution of housing problems of urban poor in other countries.

This chapter attempts to critically examine the wildlife conservation discourse that argues for curtailing the livestock grazing inside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, situated on the India’s international borders with China in southeast Ladakh. The conventional conservation discourse points at the (supposed) greed of the Changpa pastoralists in accumulating an increasing number of pashmina goats as a primary environmental cause of wildlife loss in Changthang; however, there is a critical lack of insight into the political and historical mechanisms that lie within the dynamic interaction between resource access and socio-economic inequalities, critical for understanding Changpa pastoralism today.

Ethnographic inquiry into the Changpa economy before the closure of Ladakh–Tibet border trade in 1962, and afterwards, has highlighted the political and economic transformations in the area, as well as the cultural politics of market integration and increasing inabilities of the mobile Changpa pastoralists to access vital productive resources. Inequalities reflected in the contemporary livestock data, acquired from the pastoralists, underscore the processes of institutional bricolage, non-cooperative labour, exchange/wage herding and capital-dominated market networks, making pastoralism impossible for several of the households.

The chapter argues against making livestock withdrawal a major aim of conservation sciences. It calls instead for the recognition of state-provisioned commodified pashmina rearing, seen through the prism of changing abilities and shifting institutions, where unequal access to productive resources is a reflection of both historical dispossessions and also economic impoverishments of Changpa today.

The end of the Cold War, the proliferation of “troubled states” and the rise of new kinds of transnational problems is forcing the USA and others to reappraise the nature of national security. This article explores the role of the US military in responding to these new challenges, specifically focusing on military operations other than war (OOTW), ie deterring war, resolving conflict, peacekeeping, nation building, disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. Through a consideration of driving forces and the construction of four scenarios (Turbulent Third Wave, The Dark Side, Global Mind Change and Technology Transformation), the article highlights key findings. Across all scenarios, demand for involvement in OOTW was found to increase substantially between now and 2020.

How can governments and survivors prepare for and manage natural disasters? Post-disaster reconstruction researchers advocate that community involvement is needed to help survivors recover effectively. This study aims to propose that cooperative goals between government officials and survivors develop guanxi relationships and constructive controversy wherein survivors voice their opinions to aid disaster recovery.

The authors adopted the critical incident technique (CIT), which has proved especially useful for studying complex issues, as well as site-intensive research for interviews and participant observation. After developing a local reputation and rapport by working in a residential resettlement area for two months, an author used the CIT to ask 118 survivors of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to describe specific incidents when they interacted with government officials about recovery issues and then to rate survey items that measure independent and dependent variables.

Results, including structural equation analyses, support the reasoning that cooperative goals between government and survivors facilitate guanxi and constructive controversy, which in turn produced effective disaster recovery, as indicated by survivors’ social support, satisfaction, reduced stress and beliefs that government officials led effectively.

The data are self-reported and subject to biases and may not be accurate.

In addition to developing theoretical understanding, the results can have important practical implications for strengthening relationships and constructive controversy between government and survivors.

Results suggest that communities have practical ways to prepare for disasters. Structuring cooperative goals among survivors, encouraging guanxi relationships, and training in constructive controversy should promote effective recovery from natural disasters.

The paper develops theory and research on how leaders can promote community involvement for effective disaster management. The paper proposes that high-quality interpersonal relationships, also referred to guanxi, and the open-minded discussion of opposing ideas, labeled constructive controversy, are major components of effective community involvement. The paper adds to the literature by empirically documenting the utility of the Western-developed theory of cooperation and competition and the concept of constructive controversy for understanding the effectiveness of government leadership for disaster recovery in China.

The erosion of ‘trust’ (among citizens as well as within and between institutional levels) is a worrying aspect of these turbulent times in Europe and beyond. Trust (between citizens and institutions, citizens and experts, policymakers and experts, and among different levels of governance) is crucial in all dimensions of disaster resilience. Risk perceptions stem from a complex web of feedback between individuals, communities, institutions, and experts. Sometimes, institutions and experts are slow or even resistant to accepting signals and knowledge about risks coming from the grassroots. Or, it is the other way around, and citizens are skeptical about the information coming from institutions and experts. Thus, trust must work in all directions (from citizens to institutions, from experts to citizens, etc.) to build a cooperative framework for action.

Our article aims to explore the construction of trust and distrust in communities dealing with historical, actual, or potential disasters by putting forward a three-dimensional approach (societal, cooperative, and institutional). We convey the idea that less tangible aspects such as culture, contextual history, knowledge, and habits shape the perception of risk, the degree of preparedness and, ultimately, the impacts of environmental changes.

These elements affect cooperative behaviors, and it is expected that the institutional environment – which will vary across domestic, national, and regional contexts – will play a significant role in nurturing trust or distrust in relation to disaster risk.

This article will offer valuable insights by developing a new conceptual framework that can be translated and validated by future research.

This study examines fisheries affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 to explore how the collectivism appears during the recovery process.

The author questions the context of collaboration after the disaster among independent small-scale fishers in Miyagi by conducting semistructured interviews with more than 50 local fishers with anthropological observations of boat fishing operations and using local documents and statistics.

The corresponding collaboration among the fishers after the disaster is not a mere “disaster utopia,” but is embedded in the socioecological context of fishing. Fishers have developed individual and group fishing. They have institutionalized competitive distribution for sedentary fish with low resource fluctuation, while outcome-equal distribution is adopted for migratory fish with high resource fluctuation. This forms a fishing continuum that connects competitive individualism with collectivism in the community, which has contributed to resilience for disaster recovery.

The balance between individualism and collectivism is decisively coordinated in socioecological contexts. The multifaceted resource strategy for maritime biodiversity that features family-based occupational differentiation in a community is crucial for disaster recovery of small-scale fishers.

The objective of the present study is to examine the history, activities, and relationships of a neighbourhood service cooperative, which evolved into a neighbourhood disaster management project that has been adopted by more than 100 neighbourhoods in the north western part of Turkey. In order to understand the core reasons for participation lethargy of the public in community based organizations (CBOs) for disaster preparedness, both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods were employed. An active CBO, at the local level, is shown to have a positive influence on the trustworthiness and perception of responsibility of such organizations by the public. The respondents in this study seem to prefer autonomous and expert actors that formally belong to the centralized state system, such as universities, search and rescue teams, and the military, although they also attribute responsibility to CBOs for disaster related activities and expect some level of leadership from these organizations. The findings point to the direction of a cultural phenomenon, which results in high power distance and low future orientation, coupled with low levels of trust towards institutions and lack of public legitimacy of such organizations. This results in the public avoiding active engagement in preparedness initiatives and suggests the need for an initial leading group to mobilize the community in this area. A set of policy recommendations are provided that will contribute to increasing the effectiveness of CBOs and will allow them become stronger actors in the network of interactions regarding disaster related activities, especially in centralized state systems.