Have you ever wondered how communities that repeatedly experience disasters recover? Griffith University’s Professor Rebecca Wickes is part of a national project that is working at the intersection of disaster resilience and community development.
The Fire to Flourish project involves the communities of Tenterfield, Eurobodalla, Clarence Valley, and East Gippsland.
Professor Wickes says the four communities involved in the project have also experienced social and economic disadvantage and were significantly impacted by the Black Summer bush fires in 2019/2020. They are also at risk of future bush fires and floods.
The Fire to Flourish program supports to communities to lead their own recovery. The program scaffolds community-led recovery with learning networks and facilitating access to the kinds of resources, research and knowledge that will help the community co-create foundations for long term resilience in ways that suit their community.
The program has a number of core principles. It foregrounds Indigenous wisdom, and the research team includes Indigenous community leaders, facilitators and co-designers. The project focuses on community led recovery with a line of sight to disrupt disadvantage systems that have kept disadvantage in place.
“We’ve just got to try to find different approaches that that allow communities to be stronger in their response to ecological harm and to be able to use these opportunities to mitigate other barriers in their community that’s stopping them from realising their full potential and their full strength,” Prof Wickes says.
“It’s an aspirational programme of work in that respect that’s trying to do quite a lot. It’s challenging, but very exciting.”
Prof Wickes says that some of the most ecologically risky areas are also areas characterised by entrenched structural disadvantage where residents have not had access the kinds of resources that helps mitigate future threats.
Central to the Fire to Flourish program is building trust. The team has spent considerable time building trust with the communities involved in the project and will continue to be involved with them for the long term.
“The researchers have had repeated and deep conversations so they could understand these communities, the contours of the community, the struggles the residents have had, the strengths and assets of the community,” Prof Wickes says.
“With communities that have experienced trauma we as researchers must be there for the long haul. Research can’t be short term in these places. We must commit to being involved with these communities and to see these communities as the dominant players in their future.
“A vital lesson for all of us is the importance of time and trust and being present in the Community and deep listening and really trying to understand the complexities of these places.
“We want to make a shift in in those communities and the way in which communities can self-regulate to improve their conditions post disaster.”
Participatory grants have been offered to communities so that they can develop and lead their own recovery through funded initiatives.
Grant writing clinics have been established so that the communities can tap into post-disaster funding in the future.
A model will be developed from the project to enable communities to use post disaster funds to benefit their communities.
“We hope to be able to provide a scalable model of how to do this, how to do this well and how to do it in a way that isn’t just about strengthening social relationships, which we think are really important, but really thinking about community development and holistically. So, thinking about the natural environment, economic wellbeing, health, social capital,” Prof Wickes says.
“The communities themselves benefit because they will be able to understand better their own systems and how they can navigate recovery in a way that resonates with their community in a more equitable way. Key is bringing in members of the community that are often left out of planning and development.
“If we can come together and find ways to have equitable access for people of all walks of life and abilities and backgrounds that only strengthens our community. It makes us better. And it is of critical importance when we’re facing such phenomenal, consistent, persistent, chronic risk.”
Prof Wickes says the project is about mitigating some of the harm from disasters for affected communities by ensuring everyone in the community is supported and encouraged to lead projects that can improve disaster resilience.
“If we can come together more holistically in response to the challenges that every country in this world is going to face in real material ways in the next 15 years of climate change, then we will be able to mitigate some of the harm, not all of it, but we may be able to get through it in a better way.”
One small study undertaken as part of the project involved surveying people who had experienced disasters to see how ready they were to face future disasters.
The findings indicated that people who have been exposed to disasters are strengthened and ready to approach the next disaster, and that experiencing these events can build people’s skills.
The project is led by Monash University in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation and the Australian Social Centre for Social Innovation. More than 50 researchers are involved in the project.
You can read more about Fire to Flourish here http://www.firetoflourish.monash/
