Search results

The occurrences of disasters have become a common phenomenon in the world and there is evidence that the frequency and intensity of disasters are increasing. There have been more than 7,000 disaster events and around 265 million displacements in the period from 2008 to 2018, which constitutes more than three times of conflict and violence-related displacements (Disaster Displacement – A global review, 2019). Natural disasters are responsible for nearly 60,000 deaths per year on average and are responsible for 0.1% of global deaths. Various forms of natural disasters pose significant threats to lives, livelihoods, economic development, and ecological diversity around the world. Similar to the world scenario, Sri Lanka has a similar situation. Sri Lanka has been identified as a drought hot spot. Nearly, 15,000 people per million are at risk of disaster-induced displacement every year in Sri Lanka. During the Tsunami, in 2004, 31,000 human lives were lost, and more than a million people were displaced. Thus, natural disasters cause a huge negative impact on society and the economy in Sri Lanka. In this context, the main objectives of this study are to overview the disasters and displacements that have occurred during the last two decades and to explore the livelihood activities of the affected people and their best practices of disaster resilience. Secondary data were used to overview the disasters and displacements of the last two decades and the related policy framework of the country. Primary data were used to identify livelihood activities and disaster-resilient strategies of the affected people. In-depth interviews were conducted with an unstructured questionnaire from 15 recovered families who have been affected by Tsunami and landslides that occurred in the country. The purposive sampling method was used to select families from the most disaster-affected areas. Descriptive methods were used to analyze the data. The study revealed five recovery strategies followed by displaced people from tsunamis and landslides. Those are continuing with the previous livelihood activities as much as possible, moving to different livelihood activities, moving to different areas to find better jobs, attaining external assistance, and self-management on household finance. Finally, policy guidelines for building resilience in communities that will help to enhance their capacity to cope and recover from vulnerability are proposed in improving their lives.

Compelling evidence in recent decades confirms that climate change is already happening as demonstrated by increasing mean temperature, changing precipitation patterns, rising sea level, and increasing frequency and growing intensity of extreme weather events in Asia. Regional climate studies have shown and projected that the worse is yet to come. According to the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), Asia registered the highest number of hydrometeorological disasters at 1,532 occurrences in the period 1991–2005 among all regions in the world.

Purpose – This chapter focuses on ways urban – and other non-local – pressures have influenced a rural archipelago area by studying changes in fisheries-related livelihoods, use of natural resources and regulatory regimes.

Design/methodology/approach – The material for this chapter comprises mainly of structured and semi-structured interviews with fishers and other stakeholders in the Archipelago Sea and in the Åland Islands, SW Finland. A governance approach is used, taking into account the interactive social, economic and ecological systems embedded in institutions, social networks and cultures.

Findings – The economic importance of traditional fishing livelihood has diminished, but fishing still holds a strong position in the culture and life mode of the local people in the studied archipelago areas. In families selling fish, this income stands typically for a part of the household income and especially wage work has become an important income source in the pluriactivity. Providing services for the tourists and summer cottage dwellers is a potentially growing source of livelihood. The increased recreational use of the Finnish Archipelago Sea has changed the ownership structure of the land area, mostly due to the popular summer cottage dwelling. New public fishing rights for (often urban) recreational fishers have narrowed the scope of the local decision-making and aroused resistance among the local archipelago people.

Originality/value – Rural–urban relations and governance aspects have been rarely studied in relation to the use of natural resources. This chapter gives new insights into the multifaceted roles of new urban influences in rural settings.

Livelihood preference for children is anchored in the aspiration of parents for a better life for them with due consideration of their capacities given available resources and opportunities from inside and outside the community. Given the data from an earlier survey I conducted, this chapter examines the fisheries management issues as contexts and the time factors that may have influenced the livelihood preference for children of parents, primarily fathers. Twenty-five percent of parents or 30 out of the 120 non-probability samples of municipal fishing families surveyed in South Negros in the Philippines preferred fishing for their children. For a comparative analysis, 30 parents were also randomly drawn from the remaining samples who preferred other livelihoods for their children away from fishing. As a male-dominated industry, evident in the fishing history of families, the tradition may have already declined among most parents as non-fishing livelihoods were perceived to offer family resilience to ecological and socioeconomic changes. The projected decrease in new families engaged in fishing would also mean a pressure reduction on municipal fisheries; thus, opportunities for non-fishing livelihoods must be accessible through full scholarships for college or technical-vocational education. Meanwhile, basic education sciences should infuse lessons in responsible or right fishing practices to expose children to sustainable fisheries at a young age if they pursue fishing livelihoods when they become adults.

Over the past decades, changes in climate have been commonly observed in many parts of the world. It is apparent that changes in temperature and rainfall and resulting increases in frequency and intensity of flood and drought events have affected ecological and social systems on the earth. According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warming atmosphere of the climate system is now unequivocal (IPCC, 2007). Climate change poses significant risks to the livelihoods, culture, and health of millions of people (Barnett, 2003). Ecological and climatic disasters – hurricanes, tornadoes, draught, flooding, landslides – are becoming more frequent, resulting in devastation to family and communities, especially the poor living in precarious environments (Ogata & Sen, 2003). Related to this, the number of climate-led disaster events and affected populations has been increasing during the last decades according to the data from EM-DAT (2010).

Cameroon’s contemporary legislative and institutional frameworks for disaster risk management (DRM) encapsulate the concept of Civil Protection (CP). Diverse disaster risk profile and high incidence/frequency of co-occurring natural and human-induced hazards are intimately linked to increasing vulnerability and fragile economy, transforming hazards into emergencies, crises and disasters, with dire livelihood consequences. To curb growing disaster risks, the Cameroon government instituted basic legislative and institutional frameworks for DRM, through top-down hierarchical, and ex post decision-making processes. Existing frameworks combine multi-hazard, multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary/agency approaches. Inertia, limited foresight and proactiveness, innovation capacity and limited stakeholder involvement have rendered DRM ineffective. Existing DRM instruments are vague and not explicit. DRM lags behind a rapidly evolving disaster risk profile, and implementation is scattered across ministries/agencies, rendering cross-sectoral cooperation and coordination difficult. Although Cameroon is a signatory to many international disaster risk reduction (DRR)/DRM frameworks, and frequently participates in international DRR/DRM events, implementation of international agreements leaves much to be desired. The Directorate of Civil Protection – Cameroon’s sole legislative DRM institution is marred by bureaucracy, centralisation and insufficient power to perform. There is an urgent need to overhaul existing legislation and institutional frameworks for effective DRM in Cameroon.

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) LNG project had a direct impact on many rural villagers in the project area. A Livelihood Restoration (LR) program, and later a Community Livelihood Improvement Program (CLIP), was established to assist displaced villagers with food supply and entry into the cash economy. Here we use a case study of the food processing component to focus on gender and social issues addressed through the action research process.

Over the period from 2015 to 2017, over 9000 women and men had received some training during the CLIP program, of whom 77 per cent were women. In the food processing component, women and men were trained to produce a variety of dishes. Training was also conducted in preparation of tasty and nutritious meals for the households, basic human nutrition and hygiene.

Using the action research process, we modified the program as the situation changed and as we learnt from the successes and failures in the program. Overall, the LR and CLIP programs were very successful. Several positive social outcomes occurred, including improved financial independence of many women, raised status of women in their community and a reduction in domestic violence.

Contributions to the program’s success include a gender-balanced team of agricultural, food processing and community engagement specialists; the team learnt from mistakes and modified the program using the action research process; the program was well funded by the PNG LNG Project; and success in the early stages of the program led to ongoing funding once the construction phase ended.

Drawing on current development practice and literature on Entrepreneurial support organizations (ESO), such as accelerators, incubators, and labs, this chapter explores how refugees in Uganda are supported through entrepreneurial approaches. Following an exploratory method, interviews were conducted with proprietors and managers of ESO in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. The findings show that while the majority of these organizations purport to follow an innovation discourse, in reality, they support refugees through a mixture of inclusion, resilience, and innovation-led approaches. Inclusion-led approaches focus on basic language skills, establishing peer relationships, and access to survival essentials. Resilience-led approaches nurture livelihood skills, building community ties, and access to seed-corn grants. Innovation-led approaches develop entrepreneurial skills, establishing extra-local connectivity and access to micro-finance. This chapter highlights the critical importance of inclusion and resilience-led approaches in developing supportive ESO for refugees.

Street workers, including street vendors, buskers, and waste pickers, constitute around 10–20% of the total working population of the world. Yet they are often denied their right to organise, they cannot exercise their right to be represented in decisions that directly affect their lives and futures. The entries in this chapter gathered from the leaders of street vendors associations and media representatives throughout the world, reflect their struggles to organise, to maintain a livelihood and to survive in pandemic conditions. Arbind Singh and César García Arnal give a profile of the street vendors in India and Spain respectively and explore how social and solidarity economy, a concept that, however, is still not clear to some experts in the field offers a solution to the problems rising after Corona pandemic. Evren Laçin tells the story of the foundation of the Street Vendors Association of İzmir and explains how it provides a great example to other municipalities across Turkey by bringing the ‘street economy’ model to our city and making life a part of the street. Dinçer Mendillioğlu, on the other hand, bring out the story of the Association of Recycling Workers, which is the first of its kind and which is established by the recycling workers or waste pickers, who are clinging to life by collecting paper and waste materials from the streets. Journalist Kasım Akan provides an example from Erzurum, where street vendors grow and sell inexpensive vital products that the lower income group can easily access during Corona crisis days.

The Sundarbans is a unique ecosystem, the most expansive mangrove system in the world covering the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna delta system and spread over 10,000 sq.km across India and Bangladesh. The Indian Sundarbans have been witnessed to large-scale conversion of mangroves to settled agriculture and steady growth of population over the decades. With time, while population growth has taken place, there has been no significant change in the development scenario, as the agriculture and fishing dependent communities have remained trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty. Its deltaic location and its position in the path of cyclones, tidal surges and seasonal floods have made the people and landscape of Sundarbans more vulnerable than ever before. Cyclones affecting this region have grown both in frequency and intensity over the years and have caused devastation to the land, homes, lives and livelihoods. The problem of salinity has also affected the region relentlessly. Given this scenario, scenario of progressing vulnerabilities, livelihood losses have led to a gradual increase in out-migration of the adult male population. This disaster-led outmigration from Sundarban region as a whole has affected the social fabric of displaced communities to a great extent. This chapter makes an attempt to discuss results of sample surveys across six villages in three CD Blocks of Sagar, Gosaba and Kultali to trace the nature and dimension of the migration patterns of the region.