Mitigating Impacts of Natural Hazards on Fishery Ecosystems

Wave of Change: Coping with Catastrophe

Pedro B. Bueno, Michael J. Phillips, Arun Padiyar, and Hassanai Kongkeo

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874011.ch25

Abstract.—We described and analyzed the capacity of a community to adapt to the impacts of a tsunami on their livelihoods. We looked at the community’s responses to the impacts of the tsunami and the factors that influenced its adaptive capacity. Based on this analysis, we present a number of lessons learned that are meant to enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of communities to the impacts of sudden disasters, such as a tsunami, or a slow-building catastrophe, such as global warming. The study community consisted of two village groups in an island community named Koh Yao Noi in southern Thailand that sustained losses to its resources and means of livelihood from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004. The Intergovernmental Organization of the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia–Pacific selected the community as a study site in order to gain a broader understanding of the effects of external assistance provided for livelihoods recovery and long-term development.

The various actions by the community demonstrate a longer-term view of rehabilitation than the immediate benefits available from aid. During the rehabilitation period, the community exhibited self-reliance, broad participation in decision making, trustworthiness, the ability to find opportunities opened up by the assistance without being opportunistic, and concern for the worse-off among their ranks. Collective action characterized the way the community utilized and took advantage of the opportunities presented by external assistance.

An analysis of the factors that contributed to the community’s resilience and adaptive capacities indicates the importance of social capital or assets. This finding was the basis for the three lessons drawn from the study: (1) a strong social asset enabled the community to effectively mitigate the impacts of the disaster on their other livelihood assets, (2) resiliency and better adaptive capacity can be enhanced by the creation of diverse social networks, and (3) resiliency can be increased by developing redundancy to manage risk. These lessons suggested a number of practical measures, namely fostering organized groups, mutual assistance or self-help clusters, and formal associations; facilitating the establishment of functional linkages, working relations, and communication links between organized community groups and appropriate external bodies but in a way in which the relations are a partnership rather than a donor-recipient relationship; and enhancing, with training and other measures, group decision-making skills in planning and solving community problems to make the community a stronger partner to the local government as well as to avoid being overly dependent on government for decisions on community matters.

The broader policy implications of the study include a set of recommendations for developing postdisaster adaptation measures based on local livelihoods and livelihood assets and for integrating community-level adaptation activities into national policy processes.