HR: 0800h
AN: U51A-0003    [Abstracts]
TI: Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Sri Lanka: Houses or Housing?
AU: * Khazai, B
EM: khazai@Ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Columbia University - Earth Institute, Center for Hazards and Risk Research 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AU: Franco, G
EM: guillermo.e.franco@gmail.com
AF: Columbia University - Earth Institute, Center for Hazards and Risk Research 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AU: Ingram, J C
EM: jci2102@columbia.edu
AF: Columbia University - Earth Institute, Center for Hazards and Risk Research 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AU: Rumbaitis del Rio, C
EM: cmr13@columbia.edu
AF: Columbia University - Earth Institute, Center for Hazards and Risk Research 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AB: Reconstruction can be an opportunity to address longer-term livelihood vulnerability within poor communities and households, and to empower the most vulnerable. The post-tsunami reconstruction efforts in Sri Lanka can be seen on two disconnected scales. On a local scale there seems to be a growing recognition by district-level government and NGOs on the importance of households in creating social, human and financial capital, as demonstrated by many programs targeted at rebuilding livelihoods and income-generating activities. On a national scale, however, programs have revealed an emphasis on houses as the physical capital rather than housing as the arena of social and economic life. The aim of national-scale programs is to deliver tangible and quantifiable products, in the form of houses built, often without regard of whether this complements or disrupts livelihoods. One example of such a directive is the implementation of a coastal buffer zone which will ban any new construction within a 100 to 200 meter band from the ocean and allowing only structures that sustained less than 40 percent damage to remain and rebuild. In general these kind of surviving structures along the coast are businesses such as hotels and restaurants. In an island nation such as Sri Lanka, where beach front property is by and large considered low-income housing, typically inhabited by fishermen who rely on the ocean for their livelihoods, the buffer zone constitutes a drastic oversight of local processes shaping these households. The product-oriented solution on the national scale has resulted in building permanent houses for fishery communities in resettlement sites kilometers away from the ocean. The focus of this presentation will be on reconciling the need for immediate shelter needs with a long-term perspective of livelihood rehabilitation using Sri Lanka as a case study. Houses themselves are often not an immediate priority for local people, whose first need is likely to resume income-generating activities. In normal times, building houses is seen as a multi-stage process often fitted around the local economic calendar: annual farming or fishing cycles for example. Disaster victims may choose to stay in makeshift shelters in the short term, hoping to have more time, money or materials for rebuilding later. A major challenge for the tsunami-stricken areas in Sri Lanka is to find ways of widening public participation in what to date has been a governmental framework that operates on two disconnected scales in its reconstruction efforts. There is a general absence of mechanisms for incorporating community participation into the governmental decision-making process. Local governments might have also been expected to play a larger role in recovery decision making, but frequently lack both the resources and the authority to become actively involved. Lack of participation in the construction process, has led on an over-reliance on outsiders, reinforcing an attitude of raised expectations.
DE: 9399 General or miscellaneous
SC: Union [U]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005