Abstract
Small islands have unique environmental characteristics that make them prone or vulnerable to natural and human-induced hazards. The ability of a community to measure and assess its own characteristics (i.e., connectedness, risk and vulnerability, procedures on disaster planning, response and recovery, and available resources) contributes to the improvement of its capacity to better deal with, survive, and recover from disasters. Thus, we undertook this study to measure the resilience of a small island community using a tool developed by the Torrens Resilience Institute. We conducted a survey among 37 local government officials and 192 local community residents in the Island Province of Guimaras from August to December 2018 using a structured questionnaire following a simple random sampling method. Our results show that Guimaras is facing various natural and anthropogenic hazards. However, local officials and community residents agreed that Guimaras is in the “Going Well Zone” (i.e., the island community is likely to be extremely resilient to any disaster) and that there is no significant difference (t-test, α = 0.05) in their ratings on disaster preparedness. As sun, sand, and sea tourism is a growing industry worldwide, the assessment that small island tourist destinations such as Guimaras is a resilient community would have positive impacts on the tourism industry, possibility leading to the sustainable development of coastal communities with tourism as a major source of supplemental or alternative livelihoods while reducing pressure on overexploited fish stocks.
Highlights
Small islands are features in archipelagic countries and they often possess high biodiversity (Sharpley 2012; Hess 1990)
We developed the English-language questionnaire based on the Torrens Resilience Institute (TRI) framework and tailored to the small island context with inputs from local officials through key informant interviews
As mandated by the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, each level of government from the national down to the village levels should constitute a Disaster Risk Reduction Management (DRRM) Council, which are decreed as the first disaster responders and should be at the forefront of DRRM in their geographical jurisdiction (RA 10121 2010; Republic Act (RA) 7160 1991)
Summary
Small islands are features in archipelagic countries and they often possess high biodiversity (Sharpley 2012; Hess 1990) This biodiversity does not directly translate into natural resources available for use by human inhabitants. Small islands are highly exposed to natural and anthropogenic hazards (Kuriawan et al 2016; Beller et al 1990) with potentially disastrous consequences (SFDRR 2015; UNISDR 2009) for resource availability and local livelihoods (Monteclaro et al 2018). Since such disasters are frequently unanticipated in terms of timing, magnitude, and location it is extremely difficult to avoid, mitigate, or address. We aim to (i) describe the disaster risk reduction management structure in Guimaras; (ii) determine the hazards and level of hazard awareness based on the perceptions of the local community and officials; (iii) measure the perceived level of resilience among community members and officials; and (iv) compare the perceptions of the level of disaster preparedness of various local stakeholders
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