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Community-based disaster preparedness
and climate adaptation: local capacity-
building in the Philippines
Katrina M. Allen Consultant Researcher, Social Research Associates, UK
Community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP) approaches are increasingly important elements
of vulnerability reduction and disaster management strategies. They are associated with a policy trend
that values the knowledge and capacities of local people and builds on local resources, including
social capital. CBDP may be instrumental not only in formulating local coping and adaptation
strategies, but also in situating them within wider development planning and debates. In theory,
local people can be mobilised to resist unsustainable (vulnerability increasing) forms of development
or livelihood practices and to raise local concerns more effectively with political representatives.
This paper focuses on the potential of CBDP initiatives to alleviate vulnerability in the context
of climate change, and their limitations. It presents evidence from the Philippines that, in the
limited forms in which they are currently employed, CBDP initiatives have the potential both
to empower and disempower, and warns against treating CBDP as a panacea to disaster manage-
ment problems.
Keywords: climate change, disaster management, social capital
Introduction
Climate change processes introduce an additional layer of complexity and uncertainty
into disaster management planning and preparedness. Environmentally, countries such
as the Philippines are likely to experience an increase in the frequency and severity
of typhoons and lash-looding incidents. Sea-level rise and global warming have the
potential to affect settlement patterns, agricultural systems, ishing practices and other
livelihood pursuits in many different ways. For instance, a slight change in sea tempera-
ture can devastate coral reefs, with signiicant implications for marine life and local ish
stocks. Unpredictable weather patterns can play havoc with farmers’ cropping cycles,
resulting in increased food and income insecurity for farmers and the labourers they
employ, increased risk of pest attack and increased uncertainty over which crops are
most viable in a given environment. In the social arena, climate change predictions,
discourse and processes of adaptation will inluence the development of pre-existing
or future institutions to manage vulnerability, as well as disaster management and devel-
opment policy and practice.
This paper focuses on a speciic form of local-level, social institutional capacity-
building, namely community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP), the potential of
such initiatives to alleviate vulnerability in the context of climate change, and their
limitations. CBDP approaches emphasise community self-reliance, raising awareness
Disasters, 2006, 30(1): 81 − 101. © Overseas Development Institute, 2006
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
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Katrina M. Allen
of vulnerability and the root causes of disasters and developing practical problem-
solving skills. In this respect, CBDP accords with the goals of increasing the ability of
communities to respond promptly and lexibly to changing climatic and environmental
stresses, with reference to local-speciic circumstances and conditions.
The paper’s indings draw primarily on research conducted in the Philippines during
1998 and 1999 on the CBDP initiatives of the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC).
The research comprised two in-depth project case studies involving 173 semi-structured
qualitative interviews with a broad cross section of community members and project
participants, Red Cross staff and volunteers, community leaders, local government
staff and other key actors. Subsequent updating communications with PNRC in 2002–
04 have also informed the research results.
The outcomes of CBDP are inluenced by the interaction of a complex set of factors,
including: the procedures and funding arrangements of supporting organisations; the
divergent worldviews of the various players involved and their relative negotiating
power; and the socio-economic and political context in which the initiatives operate.
Thus, ostensibly similar CBDP initiatives can differ radically in the extent to which
they are able to address root causes of vulnerability (Bankoff and Hilhorst, 2004), such
as those associated with poverty, and the ‘development aggression’ documented by
Heijmans (2004). Heijmans inds that disaster response agencies are increasingly using
‘the concept of “vulnerability” to analyse processes that lead to disasters and to identify responses’,
but at the same time, ‘agencies use the concept in the way that best its their practice—in other
words, focussing on physical and economic vulnerability’ (Heijmans, 2004, p. 115). This paper
supports the position of scholars like Blaikie et al. (1994), Heijmans (2004) and Win-
chester (1992) who claim that social and particularly political aspects of vulnerability
will need to be addressed in order to make a lasting impact on overall vulnerability
to disaster.
In theory, CBDP approaches address forms of social and political vulnerability by
engaging in capacity-building, both within local communities and in conjunction
with government and other external actors. Social capital analysis is employed to
demonstrate that CBDP initiatives are likely to be most effective when viewed as key
elements in much wider processes of disaster prevention, sustainable development
planning and institution-building, rather than as stand-alone local projects concen-
trating on short-term disaster preparedness goals. This paper supports the use of CBDP
approaches but calls for more critical analysis of the implementation and outcomes
of CBDP in practice. In this context, it warns against treating community participation
as a panacea to the problems of disaster management and climate change.
Community-based disaster preparedness in practice
CBDP is an increasingly important element of disaster management. Historically, top-
down, interventionist approaches have dominated the disaster management ield.
Initiatives have been characteristically technology-centred and driven by outside ‘experts’.
However, over the past two decades, increasing emphasis has been placed on, on the
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Community-based disaster preparedness and climate adaptation 83
one hand, community-based approaches, and on the other, pre-emptive approaches
that focus on the root causes of vulnerability rather than isolated disaster events (Blaikie
et al., 1994). Particular stress has been put on local capacity-building (Alexander,
1997; Benson et al, 2001; Christie and Hanlon, 2000; Rocha and Christoplos, 2001)
as a means of increasing resilience to natural hazard events, preventing disaster and
adapting to environmental and climatic change.
This evolution of CBDP approaches has also been inluenced by changes in inter-
national and national policymaking circles with regard to the respective roles of civil
society organisations and state actors, especially in relation to the formulation and
implementation of development strategies. Disaster management roles have often been
passed to civil society actors as state expenditure is cut back (Benson et al., 2001; Rocha
and Christoplos, 2001). However, emphasis has shifted from the role of civil society
organisations as principal service providers and facilitators of local initiatives, which
predominated during the 1980s and 1990s, to a less autonomous role for civil society
organisations working in partnership with government (Devereux, 2001). This is taking
place within the context of a ‘new architecture of aid’, characterised in the development
sphere by increased weight on government budgetary support and sector-wide funding,
in association with a rise in the channelling of international donor funding through
governments rather than directly to civil society organisations (Lister and Nyamugasira,
2003). The shift towards civil society–government partnership arrangements is an
important feature of PNRC discourse in the CBDP context.
Potentially, community-based approaches are a fundamental form of participant
empowerment and a compelling mechanism for enforcing the transmission of ideas
and claims from the bottom up. In addition to the ethics underpinning community-based
approaches, their growth is also attributable to their relative cost-effectiveness and the
preference of many donors to fund initiatives with a community-based component.
In the context of CBDP, though, there is a lack of knowledge of the long-term out-
comes (as opposed to short-term outputs) of such activity in practice (Marsh, 2001;
Midgley, 1986; Rocha and Christoplos, 2001).
Strengths and weaknesses of CBDP approaches
CBDP approaches are intended to strengthen coping and adaptive capacities at the
local level where the primary impacts of hazard events and environmental stresses are
experienced (Masing, 1999; Skertchly and Skertchly, 2001). Community-based approaches
claim to build on existing local knowledge and experience, as well as the resources,
coping and adaptive strategies of local people (Benson et al., 2001; Goodyear, 2000;
Masing, 1999; Rocha and Christoplos, 2001; Tobin and Whiteford, 2002). Pre-existing
local capacities and institutions provide a foundation for CBDP (Buckle, 2000; Masing,
1999). An overriding aim of CBDP is to ‘empower’ local people by supporting them
to become increasingly self-reliant (Christie and Hanlon, 2000; Uphoff, 1991).
The primary weakness of community-based approaches lays in the relative lack of
resources and decision-making, legislative and regulatory powers available to local-level
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Katrina M. Allen
actors and institutions at the centre of initiatives (Lavell, 1994). Such localised projects
should be viewed therefore ‘as part of a wider and deeper process of [developmental] change’
and should not be considered in isolation from the social, economic, cultural and
political context within which they are embedded (Eade, 1997, pp. 25, 22).
These points are expanded on below with reference to empirical evidence from
the Philippines.
Understanding community structures and dynamics
Successful implementation of CBDP requires an understanding of the communities
involved. In the literature, the term ‘community’ is used to describe a range of over-
lapping social units that serve as a ‘focus of social activity’ (Dynes, 1998, p. 113), and/or
of shared identity. In the context of adaptation to climate change, the community’s
most important attribute is its functional capacity to collectively identify problems, take
decisions and act on them and to allocate resources (Dynes, 1998, p. 113). In CBDP,
‘community’ has tended to delineate the population living within the territorial bounds
of a town or village administrative unit, which is considered to be exposed to a relatively
high degree of environmental hazard risk. The projects studied in the Philippines
context have engaged with barangay communities, which form the lowest formal tier
of the decentralised local government system and approximate to villages in rural
areas or districts of towns in an urban setting. Such communities therefore have an
administrative identity and a formal leadership structure comprising an elected captain
and appointed councillors, independent of CBDP. Community identity is reinforced
at the barangay level by social events such as iestas and prize-giving ceremonies, as
well as by regular public meetings. Strong local social institutions are embedded in
historical cultural norms and values concerning intra-community cooperation as
well as in the more recent (during the 1990s) evolution of decentralised governance
in the Philippines. In this respect, they provide a irm foundation for community
mobilisation.
Yet, despite displaying high degrees of functional cohesion and mobilising capacity,
local communities are heterogeneous. In one Philippines case-study community, an
ethnic minority enclave of indigenous people employed a largely autonomous decision-
making structure of their own and had minimal direct input to barangay- level affairs.
Other less distinct and cross-cutting community subgroups, such as migrants, landless
labourers and women, co-exist and at times display competing interests and priorities,
although these tend to be subsumed by notions of the common good in CBDP dis-
course and practice. Community members clearly experience different degrees of access
to community institutions and resources, depending on social status and particularly
the social capital provided by family networks. This is reinforced by substantial social
pressure to abide by rules and norms embedded in the community structure, which tend
to stile open expression of dissent. There is no question that barangay communities
are an appropriate level for disaster preparedness intervention. However, policymakers
do need to be aware of the propensity for ‘consensus-based’ local CBDP initiatives to
reinforce already powerful vested local interests. This may sometimes be to the detriment
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Community-based disaster preparedness and climate adaptation 85
of more vulnerable community members whose interests are least likely to be represented
in participatory processes (Boyce, 2000; Mohan and Stokke, 2000, p. 253; Lavell, 1994;
Winchester, 2000). Tobin (1999, p. 19) has suggested, on the basis of research carried
out in North America, that mitigation strategies that ignore social heterogeneity are
unlikely to be acceptable to intended beneiciaries. It may be that consensus-forming
pressures are more acute in the Philippines context so that such project weaknesses are
more likely to be disguised as opposed to resulting in outright project failure.
It is clear from the Philippines case studies that community-level decision-making
is a negotiated process that is coloured by local power struggles and politics as much as
by more altruistic values. This point is illustrated by the following (paraphrased) extract
from an interview with a prominent community leader:
It is important that participants in such schemes are selected from across the community. If
any one person is alone responsible for the selection of participants, then their selection is
bound to relect their ‘own biases and sympathies’. It is fairer for participants to be selected
by all members of the barangay council. There are different allegiances operating within the
community and questions would be raised if some of each councillor’s ‘people’ were not
selected for such projects.
Communities are best viewed as luid spheres of social interaction, rather than as
ixed or discrete entities (Mohan and Stokke, 2000, p. 264). In an increasingly globalised
world, both national and international migration are commonplace. Continuity of
individual involvement in CBDP cannot be guaranteed, and this is particularly the
case for highly mobile groups such as students and young college or high-school gradu-
ates as well as for landless labourers in the agricultural sector or construction industry
workers. For instance, in one case study, several of the ‘Barangay Disaster Action Team’
(BDAT) members trained under the CBDP project had migrated from the area within
the irst year of project implementation.
Migration has also provided increased opportunities for individuals and households
within a community to cultivate ties with external actors. Such ties are most commonly
associated with extended family networks, which both divide communities and cut
across boundaries between communities. In the Philippines context, the family far
outweighs government or civil society institutions as a provider of safety-net support
to resist shocks and stresses. Family and cultivated kinship networks also frequently
provide access to important resources and opportunities to improve an individual or
household’s standard of living or to support adaptation to change. Households are
often reluctant to invest their own resources in community projects and this is a key
factor undermining the capacity of community initiatives from developing independ-
ently of state or non-governmental organisation (NGO) support.
Prominent community members also develop potentially beneicial links where
possible with local government and NGO actors. In the Philippines, this is a key function
of the barangay captain. The role of key individuals in CBDP is of particular impor-
tance given that local government funding for the implementation of pre-emptive or
adaptive initiatives in relation to environmental hazards is scarce.
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