Abstract
This chapter examines the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami’s impacts on coastal regions of Thailand with a focus recovery dynamics and the role of community-based organizations. With more than 8,000 killed and thousands homeless in Thailand, coupled with heavy impacts to fishing villages and large-scale loss of livelihoods, recovery challenges have been extensive. Patterns of uneven geographic development among a culturally and socially diverse population produced different recovery dynamics by location across the impact zone. Based on extensive fieldwork in the region by the lead author, we examine recovery dynamics in a representative coastal village. We begin by reviewing the historical geography of the area and how development patterns shaped local vulnerabilities prior to the tsunami. This provides context for analyzing impacts and response and recovery dynamics at the research site, with a focus on the diverse ways local leaders, displaced residents, government agencies, and NGOs promoted a variety of recovery strategies. We consider how relief organizations dealt with a culturally diverse population with substantial pre-disaster vulnerabilities, including the limitations of state-centered “top-down” approaches to recovery. Alternative approaches based on local leadership and collaborative networks across geographic scales proved more successful at coupling vulnerability reduction with local programs of recovery. We conclude with a discussion of the role of participatory approaches and local institution building in vulnerability reduction and capacity building in the region.
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- 1.
These names are pseudonyms. The use of pseudonyms is to protect confidentiality of people involved in data collection activities. Names of individuals, organizations, and case studies can be considered direct and indirect identifiers and have been changed in the research in order to protect privacy of informants. Moreover, maps of the case study site are omitted because their unique geographical forms can be indirect identifiers of people and places, thus violating confidentiality agreements.
- 2.
Designs of government-built houses were targeted to single-family households. Space for rent for informal economic activity typical of homes in the area was not incorporated in these designs, underscoring the culturally inappropriate nature of these top-down projects.
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Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0623644, a National PERISHIP Awards, the SCION Natural Science Association, the Helios Education Foundation Scholarship, and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.
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Hutanuwatr, K., Bolin, B., Pijawka, D. (2013). Vulnerability and Disaster in Thailand: Scale, Power, and Collaboration in Post-tsunami Recovery. In: Pfeifer, K., Pfeifer, N. (eds) Forces of Nature and Cultural Responses. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5000-5_5
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