2 - Disaster and community resilience: Problematizing impact of post-disaster reconstruction in Aceh

Disaster management has long been considered a cycle of preparedness, mitigation, disaster onset, responses, and recovery phases. In each phase, some sequence also results in “first thing first”; mechanistically and linearly. Physical reconstruction, for example, is considered to come first before livelihood, social, and cultural reconstruction. Data from the post-tsunami 2004 Aceh reconstruction show that such a linear approach is problematic. Such linearity comes from too much focus on physical reconstruction as the impetus for other reconstruction and recovery. This is worsened by donor-driven mandates in the aid industry, which require fast and immediate spending with measurable output and impact. Such an approach has undermined human well-being, community cohesion and resilience, economic and livelihood independence, and socio-political reform initially proposed as objectives under the “build back better”, a lexicon in many post-disaster contexts. Failing to empower post-disaster communities genuinely has jeopardized the proposition of a sustainable post-disaster recovery. Such a deterministic linear approach has continued discouraging more integrated planning for long-term sustainability. “Social impact analysis” usually comes after developing aid houses, roads, health, and other public physical facilities. This would often mean piecemeal and low-quality outputs or non-significant and partial impacts. I propose such linearity to be complemented by more emphasis on social and cultural reconstruction. Physical and social reconstruction efforts in Aceh after the 2004 tsunami should have been interdependent and complementary. The restoration of physical infrastructure supported the social well-being of the affected population, while social reconstruction efforts contributed to the success and sustainability of physical reconstruction.