Adaptive and Transformative Capacities of Communities After Disaster: The Case of Oil Spill in Guimaras, Philippines

Abstract

Disaster recovery from industrial pollution such as major oil spill presents formidable challenge for governance and disaster management considering their adverse environmental and socioeconomic impacts. The community’s social dynamics could explain how responses to such perturbation are made and what inherent traits of the households and communities contribute to their adaptiveness to disasters. The collective decisions and actions leading to a desired and improved end likewise plays considerable role in their adaptive capacity. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches in research, this chapter examines the ecological and sociological impacts as well as the adaptive and transformative capacities of selected communities affected by oil spill in Guimaras, Philippines—one of the worst cases in the country’s history. Questionnaire elicits data on community’s quantitative level of adaptive capacity while focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, observations and narrative analysis were employed for qualitative data. Justification for the different parameters of adaptive and transformative capacities of communities was also explored. Results showed that communities are fairly adaptable to the oil spill disaster as revealed by the household adaptive capacity index developed for the study namely economic well-being and stability, demographic structure, interconnectivity to higher level processes and natural resource dependence. Each of these indicators’ result was analyzed why the community is fairly adaptable during perturbations. In the same manner, the desired trajectory towards transformative capacity was not evident as there are individual and group decisions and actions needing redirection. The spill incident was not seen as an opportunity by the residents to further improve the existing social institutions. Instead, the decisions made were generally based on their intuition and expediency without consideration of future and long term consequence. The study concluded that for communities to better respond to future spills, there should be an institutionalization of processive and systemic change. Prescriptive approach by outsiders e.g. aid and grant by donors and inadequately informed organizations should be discouraged. Spontaneous actions and those attributed to informal organizations must be effectively harnessed with the understanding that these are for long term benefits and sustainability. Its realization will further strengthen the community’s adaptive capacity in addressing future hazards. The chapter concluded with a proposed framework/model with GET (governance, education, technology) matrix in developing adaptive and transformative capacities of communities.