Revisiting community-based disaster risk management

Abstract

This paper examines whether the hypothesis presented in Ocho Rios in 1984 is still valid and relevant. The first part of the paper revisits the central tenets of the 1984 paper. The second part of the paper gives a broad overview of how community-based approaches have been taken up and evolved over the last quarter-century. The third part of the paper examines, with the benefit of hindsight, to what extent the approaches advocated in Ocho Rios are still valid. Finally, the paper examines the role of community-based and local-level approaches looking into the future. The paper is written as a personal reflection, without any pretence to academic rigour and also without systematically surveying the thousands of ongoing community-based or local-level initiatives in disaster risk management, referred to in this paper as community-based disaster risk management and local-level disaster risk management, respectively.