Community Resilience to Disasters in the South East Administrative District of Botswana: Theories and Perspectives

Abstract

This study seeks to motivate individuals/or communities to reduce disaster related risks by adopting an approach based on the crisis, stress, social constructivism and resilience theories and the ecological model that provides analytical lens for hazards and risks and related behaviours. The study covers three communities: Ramotswa, Otse, and Mogobane in the South East Administrative district of Botswana. It adopts a concurrent mixed research paradigm to theoretically assess the perception of hazard, risks, and disaster in the three communities studied. The sample consists of a total of 3567 respondents for the quantitative and 120 participants for the qualitative phase respectively. The 3567 constituted 94 % of the target 10 percent of the total population from each of the communities represented in the study. In terms of gender representation, males constituted 40% while females were 60% and were the majority in all age groups. The quantitative phase was meant to establish the extent of the problem and its scope, and to describes prevalent resilience characteristics. The crisis, stress, social constructivism and resilience theories and the ecological perspective provide the analytical lens for the interpretation of data. A key result from the study shows that communities are vulnerable and are constantly under disaster threat. Although there are district disaster management committee, they are only active during emergency response and fail to address the pre and post disaster activities. As such, communities, families, and individuals lack fundamental knowledge, skills, and techniques that would enhance their resilience to disasters. After reflecting on issues that make individuals/or communities vulnerable, the participants, key informants, focus groups, and respondents propose radical disaster resilient measures and a shift from reactive to proactive measures to disasters.