Enablers and barriers of adapting post-disaster resettlements

Abstract

Growing trend of disaster-induced displacements and resettlements is alarming the world to address the consequences to retain the stability of the concerned countries. In order to reduce the causes and consequences of displacements, governments and other concerned entities involve in the process of resettlement in different scales. However, settlers complain of the large-scale resettlement schemes for their inability to meet long-term expectations. Adaptability of the built environment is viewed as one of the principle reasons for this criticism. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore the long-term adaptability issues face by the communities who live in resettlements. Resettlement is a process that introduces new built environment for the displaced community. This new built environment potentially redefines the social system as one interlinked with other subsystems of the community. However, following a fundamental change in the system, restoring the earlier equilibrium of a community requires certain basic conditions. Resettlement fails if the built environment does not provide these basic conditions. Failure in terms of built environment has been recorded in studies based on the inappropriate house design, insufficient infrastructure, inappropriate new environment, and alike. Based on several case studies, it is assumed that the process of resettlement in developing countries follows almost the same pattern as the results of similar resettlement cases that are shown in various pieces of literature reflect same issues. Therefore, in order to understand the process of resettlement in detail, selecting a particular developing country will give more focus to draw conclusions. Accordingly, Sri Lanka is selected as the study focus. The data collection technique that is used for this study is semi-structured interviews. These interviews were conducted among settlers in 3 different resettlement schemes in Sri Lanka. The interview results are analysed using content analysis. The outcome of this study shows the enablers and barriers in adapting a post-disaster resettlement which is necessary to identify in order to provide durable solutions.