blombergbn
commented
7 years ago I would be really interested to work on this project, as I find myself increasingly interested in social and environmental justice. I think a portion of my proposal (#12) could be incorporated here. In addition to the minority and vulnerable groups you mention, I think fishery-dependent households are particularly vulnerable in the Gulf. Many fishery-dependent households would also fit in one or more of the other vulnerable populations, particularly indigenous (thinking Southern LA) and immigrants (e.g., many of the shrimping communities across the Gulf are largely Vietnamese). In addition, they tend to be low income and low education, adding to their vulnerability. I think the tie to involvement in recovery and restoration is great. Some of the early efforts to curb destruction were implemented by out of work fishers, and I think in the long term, having community structures in place to provide income via restoration and recovery can help reduce the vulnerability of displaced or out-of-work fishers following such disasters.
Author: Haorui Wu Topic: community analyses including participation and vulnerability factors
Summary
This group synthesis project will examine the community engagement in post-disaster long-term reconstruction and recovery from the lens of social and environmental justice, by addressing vulnerable and marginalized groups’ participation. According to the nature of communities in the Gulf of Mexico region, the targeted vulnerable and marginalized groups will be inspected in this project include indigenous, immigrants, and refugees (IIR). The project aims to decipher the relationships between IIR’s participation (participation factors, PFs) in their community’s long-term redevelopment process and their vulnerability reduction (vulnerability factors, VFs). The PFs will include: engaging in the process of community development related decision-making, built environment’s reconstruction, natural environment recovery, social, cultural, and economic redevelopment, etc. The VFs (including equal opportunity, mental health, financial status, access to social and other service, and so on) will be examined.
Data
Two main types of data will be required in this group project, which must be obtained by tracing the changes during the same post-disaster reconstruction and recovery period: (1) Tracing of the PFs and (2) Tracing of the VFs.
Analytical approaches
Both quantitative and qualitative analytical approaches will be employed in this group project. Each team member will examine the connections between one or several PFs with one or several VFs. The entire team will work together to synthesize all the team members’ findings in order to discover the complexities among the complexity between PFs and VFs.
Significance
The vulnerable and marginalized populations, such as indigenous, immigrants, refugees, women, children and youth, and elders, are hit the worst by global disasters and climate change. Meanwhile, these groups’ recovery process and building of resilience capacity are significantly more delayed than other groups. Community engagement is one of the well-known capacity building instruments that develop vulnerable and marginalized groups’ leadership competency and enhance their social capital, in order to achieve vulnerability reduction and sustainable development. Through tracing the IIR’s engagement in their community development and the changes regarding their vulnerability, this proposed project will contribute to the practice of equal participation, support disaster survivors’ holistic wellness, and advance community resilience by synthesizing scientific data with social science approaches. The project is significant because it provides a range of community perspectives on sustainability, equity and livelihoods, post-disaster, that would be of interest to stakeholders (such as emergency service volunteers, emergency managers, educators, social workers, community practitioners, and the social sciences), particularly in the relationship between the social construction of disasters, climate change adaptation and mitigation, the environment, and sustainable development.