Many informal settlements have insufficient capacity to forecast, check, handle and reduce disaster risk. These communities face a growing range of challenges including economic hardship, technological and social impediments, urbanisation, under-development, wildfire, climate change, flooding, drought, geological hazards and the impact of epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, sometimes termed ‘the burden of disease’. The inability of these communities to withstand adversities affects the sustainability of initiatives to develop them.
This is a question I would have asked during my masters degree research on Resilience in Disasters. I would like to know the opinions of other researchers as I would like to properly answer this question in a different research-related topic.
It is hard to generalize, but some factors that the literature mentions are: (1) level of community organisation and community ties (closer and organised communities tend to cope better); (2) government support (some governments are more willing than others to help informal settlements in adverse times); (3) physical morphology of the settlement (informal settlements that are more connected to the “formal” city or with good evacuation routes tend to do better coping with vulnerability ); (4) quality of infrastructure and housing (informal settlements are quite diverse and not all are poor, the ones with better housing will usually perform better).
Hope this helps.
John despite the range of health, economic and socio- cultural challenges faced by such settlements and the emerging research difficulties such communities provide ample opportunities for novel methodological and theoretical postulations especially in resilience studies. One such possibility abounds in why some of them still exist as vibrant entities with apparently functioning systems despite the continuous difficulties. It would also be interesting to find out what quantitative and qualitative frameworks ar better suited in capturing these out of the norm types of human habitation Interesting work here.
The policies there, the characteristics of the population and environmental factors could differ and affect compatibility
one of the reasons could be as a result of security of tenure. In attaining any sustainable settlements and societies that thrive well security tenure is important as it provides sufficient shelter and infrastructure. We should not forget that development of any place come by side by side with rise in poverty, informal settlements and insufficient housing which could serve as crisis that targeted low-income set of people that may not be able to afford funding their individual housing/accommodation.
More also, livelihoods could as well be one of the reasons others informal settlements and societies fail. Looking at livelihood as the abilities, resources and that actions required for a means of living when not sustainable, it will not be able to cope with and recuperate from pressures and shocks both for current and in the imminent.
In the out-port communities of Newfoundland and Labrador the people have a tradition of self-help. In the event of a natural disaster the pull together. The response to Hurricane Igor in 2014 demonstrated the "social" resilience this tradition imparts. Stephanie Sodero, PhD (Memorial University of Newfoundland) has written extensively on this subject for those who want to explore further.
Phil Helwig, St. John's (NL)
I think it might be related to the cohesion and solidarity within the societies.
i think the attitude and positivism of the community and their leaders is one big factor to add.
Thank you all... I have learnt alot... God bless you all...
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