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Resilience: response, recovery and ethnicity in post-disaster processes
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Additionally, the Gilbertese survivors developed an interest in wild-edible foods, as they learned that these fruits and
vegetables cover the whole island and can almost always be relied on. Incorporating knowledge on and use of foods
provided by the terrestrial ecosystem into their food-providing livelihood activities contributed to the strength of
their livelihood diversification: not only do they now have several food-producing livelihood activities, these activities
are also spread over various locations. This reduces the risk of food-producing livelihood activities being destroyed
or made inaccessible by a single hazard. Motu-cooking as practiced by Melanesian Solomon Islanders was also
adopted by Ghizo’s Gilbertese islanders. Particularly in the immediate aftermath of the 2007 events, the interest in
motu-cooking increased tremendously.
Conclusion
Differences in the strategies of Ghizo’s Melanesian and Gilbertese inhabitants to cope with the havoc caused by the
earthquake and tsunami is largely explained by the pre-existence or non-existence of a locally-relevant disaster
subculture, particularly with reference to the strength of the diversification of livelihood activities. In line with Wisner
et al. (2004), the processes depicted above illustrate that affected communities can learn from the experiences of
a disaster; they are able to make changes in their socio-cultural make-up to overcome the havoc caused by the
hazards and to better prepare for future events (Birkmann 2010, Gaillard & Le Masson 2007). Hence understanding
communities’ responses, and the differences therein, provides valuable indicators of trajectories of recovery. In turn,
analysing socio-cultural recovery processes provides insight into which post-disaster changes within the impacted
communities are taking place and how these changes inform community resilience for future disaster risk. Hazard
and disaster research as carried out today often overlooks or misunderstands the important information the post-
disaster processes can provide (Birkmann 2010). In particular, there is a shortage of such studies focussing on
small island developing states (Meheux et al. 2007), and on the role of ethnicity in disaster responses (Gaillard
2012). This information is critical for drafting effective disaster risk reduction strategies and to build resilience (Bird
et al. 2011). Ignoring this information can result in inappropriate allocation of resources for disaster management
and missed lessons for disaster mitigation (Birkmann 2010). This paper therefore, calls not only for an increase in
studies on post-disaster processes in small island developing states, and in particularly on the role of ethnicity, but
also for a stronger integration of findings of such research in disaster risk reduction policies.
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