Community-centred disaster recovery: A call to change the narrative

Abstract

This paper challenges current approaches to undertaking community-centred disaster recovery. Community-centred approaches are widely recognised as ‘the gold standard’ for effective recovery from disasters. Yet, they are rarely applied well enough in practice. Challenges include the ‘authority’ culture of command-and-control agencies, the emphasis on discrete recovery time frames, and the reluctance to relinquish centralised control. The paper focuses on people's experiences of community-centred recovery in New South Wales, Australia, which has experienced severe fires and floods since 2019. We undertook key informant interviews and an online survey to inquire into how community-centred recovery is enacted. Our work uncovered widespread dissatisfaction with current practices. The paper discusses key themes emerging from the research and ends with a call to change how community-centred recovery is framed and conducted by responding organisations, to include the underlying causes of vulnerability in recovery, to measure success differently, and to alter the narrative of who ‘owns’ disasters.