Resilience in the tsunami-affected area: A case study on social capital and rebuilding fisheries in Aceh-Indonesia

Abstract

The tsunami disaster in NAD province has affected and reduced significantly the social and ecological resilience of coastal communities. The ‘huge aid’ and large number of parties involved during fisheries rebuilding process are essential in supporting the rehabilitation of fisheries infrastructure and knowledge transfer in order to improve fishers and fish-farmers capacity in dealing with ecological feedback. This process is potential to present either the effective or the ineffective responses. The effectiveness is essential since the tsunami is seen as an opportunity for building resilient within coastal communities and better future of fisheries governance. However, tsunami occurred in the context of vulnerability and its impacts have caused the vulnerability, since the fisheries production assets wiped out by tsunami. The effective response is influenced by the ability of the disaster authorities and other parties involved providing a properly action and mechanisms that represents in the implemented policies. This ability also influenced by the previous experiences in designing the policy, as a mean to deal with social and ecological problems in the past. The response to this disaster has indicated to have potential to create vulnerability within survivors as well, which lower the ability to adapt to and cope with disasters. These, in the long-term goals, may promote less incentive to the resilient communities and preserve the status quo. The effectiveness can be achieved by understanding the diversity and coping strategies in the fisheries capture and aquaculture that mainly characterized by the livelihood strategies. On the other hand, understanding and strengthening the social capital of the individuals, households, fisher groups, and local institutions are essential, which enable to provide effective responses and adaptive capacity. These can be addressed through allowing the social learning framework to take place during rebuilding fisheries process. These frameworks also enable to provide feedback for the governance structure as an evaluation to ineffective response and as a tool to deal with the complexity of integrated intervention, including resource management after the tsunami.

Keywords: Tsunami, rebuilding fisheries, vulnerability, social capital, effective intervention, learning framework, resilience.