Risky Encounters Institutions and interventions in response to recurrent disasters and conflict Annelies Heijmans Thesis committee Thesis supervisor Prof. dr. ir. D.J.M. Hilhorst Professor of Humanitarian Studies and Reconstruction Wageningen University Other members Prof. dr. ir. C Leeuwis, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Dr. L. Heyse, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Dr. J. Twigg, University College London, Great Britain Dr. C.J. van Westen, University of Twente, The Netherlands This research was conducted under the auspices of the CERES graduate school and the Wageningen School of Social Sciences (WASS) Risky Encounters Institutions and interventions in response to recurrent disasters and conflict Annelies Heijmans Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor at Wageningen University by the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof. dr. M.J. Kropff, in the presence of the Thesis Committee appointed by the Academic Board to be defended in public on Tuesday 8 May 2012 at 16:00 p.m. in the Aula. Annelies Heijmans Risky Encounters: Institutions and interventions in response to recurrent disasters and conflict 312 pages Thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen, NL (2012) With references, with summaries in Dutch and English ISBN 978-94-6173-267-5 Table of contents Acknowledgements ix Chapter 1 – Responding to recurrent disasters and conflict 19 The politics of drought response in the uplands of Panay, the Philippines 20 The rise of community-based approaches in response to failing development strategies 22 Initiating the PhD research in an interactive research setting with aid agencies 24 Sources of research questions – new experiences, dilemmas and assumptions 26 A strategic research choice to manage security issues and institutional dynamics 28 Aim of the PhD research and research questions 29 Aim of the CBDRR pilot programme 31 Theoretical concepts 32 Concepts that make up CBDRR – prevailing definitions 32 An actor-orientation 33 The policy-practice discrepancy: what do interventions do? 36 Studying the political arena of disaster risk reduction 41 Exploring conceptual and theoretical commonalities in disaster and conflict discourse 45 Outline of the book 49 Chapter 2 – “Designing the plane while flying it” 53 Negotiating an interactive research with aid agencies in disaster and conflict settings Traditions of interactive research and knowledge interests 54 Processes of knowledge construction in interactive research 56 Relevance, appropriateness and ethics of interactive research in disaster and conflict 65 settings Shaping the interactive research – ‘designing the plane while flying it’ 71 Multiple roles and positioning of the researcher 72 Selection of local partners to be involved in the CBDRR pilots 74 Negotiating research principles and methods 75 Quality criteria for interactive research 78 Limitations of the research 81 Chapter 3 – Disasters as an opportunity for social change 83 CBDRR in the Philippines: experiences to organize effective agency for risk reduction Making sense of my CBDO-DR experience in the Philippines 84 CBDO-DR in the Philippines: historical roots of citizens’ responses to disasters 84 Social movements, framing collective action and a neutral image 86 Framing and re-framing CBDO-DR policy in a dynamic environment 88 The institutional context of disaster risk reduction in the Philippines 94 The political arena of both responding to disasters and conflict 97 Mobilizing effective agency to find room for manoeuvre in Philippine context 100 The meaning of CBDO-DR in the Philippines 107 Concluding remarks 110 Chapter 4 – The social life of community-based disaster risk reduction 113 Methodology: about personal constructs and the social life of CBDRR 114 Origins of ‘home-grown’ CBDRR traditions 115 Brief history of UN-led disaster risk reduction policy 118 The social life of CBDRR: diversity in meaning and perspectives of actors 119 CBDRR is a contested approach: different interpretations and divergent practices 126 Beyond Kobe – CBDRR as a political construct in the UN-civil-society arena on DRR 127 Civil society’s policy influence or co-optation? 129 Discussion and conclusion 131 Chapter 5 – The risk of using local knowledge in CBDRR 133 Concepts and methodology 134 Affected people as ‘social actors’ 134 Local risk perceptions, local knowledge and local practice 134 How to analyse local people’s perceptions and their agency? 136 Local narratives on dealing with risks, disaster and conflict 137 Gender-segregated local narratives from Afghanistan 138 Stories from Nahreen, Baghlan province: interplay between disasters and conflict 141 Stories from Khulm, Balkh province 145 Stories from Ghulistan village, Bamyan province 150 Stories from Chapdara sub-village, Sar-e-Qul village, Bamyan province 154 Intermezzo: making sense of local narratives in Afghanistan 156 Stories from peace shuras in Kunduz, Herat and Kabul provinces 157 Halmahera, Indonesia: how people talk about the communal violence and 160 its consequences Story from Malifut-Kao – fall 1999 161 Stories from Tobelo – Rumours about “Bloody Christmas” and “Bloody Ramadan” 163 Making sense of competing local narratives in northern Halmahera 167 Stories from Central Java – making sense of ‘new risks’ 169 Overall insights and conclusions about what is local knowledge 171 CBDRR current definitions re-examined 175 Chapter 6 – The politics of selecting, entering and organising communities 177 Structure of the chapter 178 Concepts and methodology 179 The CBDRR step-by-step model 179 Concepts to analyse the nature of relationships and interactions 181 The politics of selecting, entering and organising communities 182 The NGO field staff or community organizers: who are they? 183 Selecting, entering and organising communities: experiences from the field 186 The broader political and institutional context of Afghanistan 186 The broader political and institutional context of Indonesia 188 The politics of selecting communities 189 Selecting communities for piloting CBDRR: experiences from the field 191 Entering the village 195 Searching for the most vulnerable and participation in framing risk problems 202 Community organising and empowerment: with what perspective? 209 Conclusions 214 What do these experiences and practices mean for CBDRR-concepts? 217 Chapter 7 – The everyday politics of CBDRR practice 221 Prioritizing risk: whose risk? 223 The construction of a permanent evacuation centre in Kasiyan, Sukolilo subdistrict 224 Engaging in the political arena beyond Kasiyan 227 Negotiation DRR interventions: the case of normalization of Juwanan river 228 Negotiating DRR interventions: the case of five evacuation centres 234 Reducing sandstorms and opium addiction in Ghoryan district, Herat province 236 The politics of gender in constructing risk narratives and social protection 242 Discussion and conclusions 245 Chapter 8 – What is CBDRR really? 249 Conclusions, conceptual reflections and implications for aid programming What is CBDRR really? – an approach of which meanings and intentions are contested 250 Potential of CBDRR approaches in conflict settings 254 Re-examining the prevailing definitions of CBDRR concepts 256 Answering the research questions 262 Implications of findings for CBDRR practitioners and policy-makers 266 Final remarks 271 Bibliography 273 Summary 291 Samenvatting 297 List of abbreviations 303 Glossary 305 Author biography 307 Acknowledgements Once upon a morning, I woke up with my mind racing with thoughts about the Allegory of Plato’s Cave hinting that it somehow had a link to my PhD project. The allegory of the cave, as you may know, is about a group of people who live chained to the wall of a cave. They cannot move their heads for they are fixed to stare at a wall in front of them. The only things they can see are shadows projected on the wall by figures, people and things passing in front of a fire behind them. They can also hear echoes bouncing off the wall from noises produced outside the cave. The people in the cave take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds and not just reflections of reality. The allegory continues with supposing that a person is freed and can leave the cave. That person would be struck blind by the light of the fire and the sun, confused by what he sees and keen to immediately return to the cave. Eventually, though, he would adapt and start to understand how these new things around him are the cause of all those shadows and echoes that he and his chained fellows had been seeing and hearing inside the cave. Were he to return and share his observations of the world outside, nobody would believe him. They would not understand his views and experiences, because their language only refers to shadows and echoes. The allegory symbolizes the dividing line between different worlds, and refers to the difficulty and discipline it takes to cross such lines. This PhD project aimed to under- stand the local realities of populations affected by disaster and conflict, by crossing the line at the cusp of the world of aid agency headquarters – these bodies portray and (re-)construct local realities in a way that legitimizes their interventions. When my initial findings of fieldwork in Afghanistan and Indonesia were presented to managers and policy makers in the Netherlands, they initially did not believe me. They had to get used to the idea that views on local realities differ, depending on the varying positions in which actors experience and deal with the world around them. Through the flow of time, there were more lines I crossed, caves I left and new realities I entered. Returning to the academic world, after 15 years of NGO work in the outside world, demanded my own acclimatization to scientific research practices and searching for well-founded arguments. Reflecting now on the process of how this research took shape, I realize how so many people supported me in crossing this line, leaving a mark on me and on this book’s content. To them, I express my profound gratitude for having made the process not only possible but also enjoyable and profoundly fulfilling.