Community Obligations in Shared Responsibility: Policy Pathways for Resilience

Abstract

Shared responsibility lies at the heart of the Australian National Strategy for Disaster Resilience; disasters are no longer solely a government responsibility as all societal actors are charged with some obligations for disaster mitigation, response and recovery. However, shared responsibility carries with it certain legal and policy ramifications: for responsibility to be shared across the community, it must be specified, accepted and complied with. The community is a central concept in the NSDR, as community resilience and empowerment are its stated goals. While research so far has focused on responsibility-sharing between different levels of the government and on the role of the individual, we focus on the much more problematic community. Communities can be place-based (as in a specific locality or region); or interest-based (a group of people within society sharing common characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, recreation or industry); or a combination of these. In disaster resilience the starting point for consideration is a community of place, within which lie multiple, diverse, competing and overlapping communities of interest. In this study, we break down a hypothetical place-based community into its component parts (households, businesses, government and various types of community organisations) to examine the responsibilities that are (or conceivably might be) placed on them by the NSDR and associated policies. We identify what types of policy instruments (regulation, price signals, moral suasion) are used to ensure, or at least promote compliance and cooperation with identified responsibilities. We then discuss what these policy instruments mean for the achievement of community resilience.