Enhancing community-based disaster risk management

Community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM) is basically a process of actively involving communities in all phases of disaster risk management. In other words, it promotes the involvement of potentially affected community members in disaster risk management at the local level. This includes community assessments of hazards, vulnerabilities and capacities and their involvement in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of local action for disaster risk reduction.

The community is central in disaster risk management. Therefore, building the capacity of communities to enable them to assess their state of vulnerability to either natural or human-induced hazards forms the basis of CBDRM.

Further, community members develop strategies and mobilise resources necessary to prevent and or/mitigate the impact of the identified hazards. That way, community members are prepared to respond, rehabilitate or reconstruct following a disaster.

A bottom-up approach is likely to receive acceptance because considered community members are the best judges of their own vulnerability and can make the best decisions regarding their well-being.

A community is a social group of any size that shares characteristics such as geographical location, cultural and historical heritage. They are groupings which are mainly united by a sense of belonging while their behaviours are usually shaped by their customs and traditions. Communities may also share social and political identity, among other attributes.

Traditionally, governments, international organisations and donors have remained the major players in disaster management. While this approach has been effective to a certain extent, sustainability of disaster management activities, projects and programmes have faltered at local level after the competition of projects. This supports the notion that community members’ participation in disaster risk management activities is a critical element in achieving sustainability in disaster risk management interventions.

The effectiveness and sustainability of disaster interventions is mainly driven by the use of local knowledge, participatory development of action plans or interventions, implementation of acceptable plans and enhanced risk awareness.

The community members are mainly the first responders when disasters strike and are, therefore, able to provide a prompt response as the community members take action on their own. The community members are the custodians of the best local knowledge on hazards and vulnerabilities, coping mechanisms, best assessors of disaster impacts and recovery processes. The community’s active involvement ensures ownership and acceptability of action plans, individual responsibility, community approval and confidence in the plans.

CBDRM is, therefore, a risk reduction programme, which is primarily designed by community members and for people in certain disaster-prone areas.

It may be rightly argued that disaster mitigation using government and institutional interventions alone may be insufficient as it may not pay adequate attention to community dynamics, priorities and perceptions.

Since CBDRM reduces vulnerabilities and strengthens peoples’ capacities to cope with hazards, a thorough assessment and understanding of the community’s exposure to hazards, analysis of specific vulnerabilities and capacities become the basis for activities, projects and programmes that can address disaster risks.

Therefore, education and outreach must be based on a thorough understanding of the process that individuals go through when they make decisions about modifying their personal behaviour in response to disaster risks. Community members must be aware of the risks, understand the impact of an adverse event on their family and community, understand the implications of ignoring warning messages which could include injury, destruction of property or death. More importantly, community members need to appreciate the need to take action and heed the warning to evacuate or relocate depending on the phase of disaster risk management.

Community preparedness should entail advance capacity of the community to respond to the consequences of an adverse event, having in place action plans so that people can know what to do, where to go and who to contact, upon the issuance of a warning or an observation of a hazard.

Further, community preparedness must include awareness creation, effecting behavioral change in the areas of mitigation and preparedness, effective warning systems and messaging to trigger appropriate and favourable community response.

In conclusion, CBDRM demands that local institutions demonstrate efficient disaster preparedness and response delivery and that governments empower local institutions through national policies, which could promote establishment of onsite disaster management system. By targeting, organising, capacitating and actively involving community groups, disaster risk management interventions can be sustained and peoples’ livelihoods restored.