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Karen Sudmeier-Rieux, University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
Alain Breguet, University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
Jerome Dubois, University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
Michel Jaboyedoff, University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
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Risk governance is a process by which information about risk is collected, analyzed, communicated and decisions are taken to minimize risk. Consensus, acceptability and communication about decision-making are essential for reducing risk. Policies and actions to reduce risk often refer to the need to increase a community's or structure's resilience to future risk. In spite of the increasing amount of literature on resilience, few accounts have been made of how to operationalize and assess this useful concept. We propose a case study of how a village reorganized and recovered following the 2005 Kashmiri earthquake which triggered numerous landslides and left the steep hillsides fragilised due to numerous cracks. Secondly, we suggest an operational framework for disaggregating resilience in order for decision-makers to better address societal and environmental needs following a hazard event, and in terms of adaptation to climate change.
Resilience is a term found on both sides of the natural- and social sciences literature. The approach, "resilience analysis and management" sets out to understand the interchangeable nature of social-ecological systems, how they can be made more resilient to shocks, and more able to recover or reorganize themselves should large shocks occur. A resilient system is then more capable to adapt to both slow on-set change and sudden shocks. In order to operationalize resilience, it needs to be broken into societal capital, i.e. communications systems and risk perceptions; and its biophysical capital. A society will also respond differently depending on its societal and environmental capital as well as its relationship to risk, which often differs for mountain communities.
We based our study of land use strategies, landslides and risk perceptions on an interdisciplinary approach including remote sensing analysis, a broadened geological survey, including vegetation type and land use, as well as a socio-economic survey of risk perceptions and land use strategies. For the case of Saidpur village in Kashmir, Pakistan, landslides and cracks caused significant damage to dwellings, infrastructure and terraced fields. Without formal "expert" advice, this densely populated village re-organized itself, with houses rebuilt on land perceived as less risky, "risky" fields were taken out of production, straining household incomes. Eighteen months after the earthquake, risk perceptions remained high, and it was felt that traditional methods were not sufficient to stabilize the numerous fragile slopes and cracks. We suggest that our conceptual framework could assist decision-makers in prioritizing actions for increasing the resilience capabilities of a highly vulnerable community. We conclude that integrated land management schemes using simple rules will increase the capacity of a population to recover more rapidly to a stable state. This also requires establishing local monitoring of hazards such as landslides.
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