A framework for resilient rural community on natural disaster in Malaysia

Abstract

Natural disasters events have put many lives everywhere at risk, particularly those in the rural areas. It is estimated that 4.82 million people in Malaysia are affected annually by flooding events. The growing body of literature on climate change, disaster risk reduction (DRR), and community resilience indicates an increased focus on research works to understand the phenomena of natural disasters and to build a resilient community. Developing a community-based disaster preparedness is increasingly considered as an important component of DRR with the potential to increase the community’s resilience to natural disasters through identification of community capitals, role of local knowledge for interventions, and/or responses to natural disasters. This study therefore aims to achieve the following five objectives. (1) to identify the concept of a resilient rural community in relation to international agenda for DRR and determine the practical form of framework for application in a local context, (2) to determine the rural communities’ current DRR-related practices and gather information on community capitals which are vital for building a resilient rural community against natural disasters, (3) to assess the state of community capitals that comprises the economic, social, and environmental components, (4) to examine the relationships between community capitals and factors that influence resilience towards natural disaster, (5) to formulate a disaster resilience rural community(DRRC) operational framework for local disaster managers and committees. Through a literature review, a conceptual framework for disaster resilience rural community (DRRC) towards disaster is proposed and later assessed in a field-testing. Three rural communities in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia were selected as case-study areas, namely (1) Lubok Setol village in Kelantan; (2) Teladas village in Terengganu, and (3) Gajah Mati village in Pahang. A total of 90 respondents sampled from stratified random sampling participated in the household survey. The survey of the local stakeholders was based on questionnaire-guided interviews carried out by the researcher with assistance provided by local informants. Assessment for determining level of community resilience was carried out using Descriptive and Frequency Analysis, and the influential factors for community resilience were analysed using Relative Importance Index (RII) Value and Interpretation. Findings from the fieldwork were confirmed or validated by a group of experts via interviews. The results showed that community resilience to flooding in all the three communities is strongly linked to internal and external factors, namely the individual’s adoption of local knowledge combined with intervention and support from related government agencies and nongovernmental organisations(NGOs). These findings were then integrated into the conceptual framework, which was further validated through the experts’ engagement and semi-structured interviews. In total, seven (7) experts in DRR consisting of academicians, practitioners, government officials, and NGOs participated in the validation process. Index Analysis was adopted to determine the suitability uptakes of the proposed components of the framework. The final proposed framework consists of four major components: (1) community capital of economic, social and environment, (2) modelling DRRC to natural disasters, (3) key drivers for DRRC, and (4) key deliverables of DRRC. This framework can be applied as a tool to assist our local disaster managers and committees towards building a resilient rural community against natural disaster events in Malaysia.