Duda, Patrizia Isabelle; (2021) Informal Disaster Governance in Longyearbyen and South Dominica. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Scholars and practitioners are increasingly questioning formal disaster governance (FDG) approaches as being too rigid, slow, and command-and-control driven. Too often, local realities and informal influences are sidelined or ignored to the extent that disaster governance can be harmed through endeavours to impose formal and/or political structures. Efforts to include so-called ‘bottom-up’, local, and/or participatory approaches have not changed the FDG-centred disaster narrative. This study considers the role of informality in disasters, encapsulated here as Informal Disaster Governance (IDG). It theorises IDG and situates it within the long-standing albeit limited literature on the topic, paying particular attention to the literature’s failure to properly define informal disaster risk reduction and response (DRR/R) efforts. Empirically, this study explores IDG in two locations—the settlement of Longyearbyen in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and the southern region of the Commonwealth of Dominica—where IDG might be expected to be more powerful or obvious, namely in smaller, more isolated communities. Fifty-four semi-structured interviews were conducted, visually aided by an innovative use of the PRISM (Pictorial Representation of Illness and Self Measure) tool, to examine residents’ perceptions of disaster risks, and informal sources of disaster-related information and help. The findings suggest that informality plays a significant and complementary role in disasters in both locations and highlight the role of proximity/propinquity, relationships, experience, and power as contributing factors for why people choose informal sources of disaster information and help. Thus, this study conceptualises the drivers and far-reaching implications of IDG but also considers its ‘dark sides’. By presenting IDG as a framework and exploring its merits and challenges, this research restores the conceptual importance and balance of IDG vis-à-vis FDG, paving the way for a better understanding of the ‘complete’ picture of disaster governance.

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