Community resilience implications for institutional response under uncertainty: Cases of the floods in Wayanad, India and the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Abstract

While trajectories of community resourcefulness, solidarity, and mutual trust during and following environmental crises are abound in the literature, how these trajectories are taken into consideration and influences spatial planners, humanitarians and decision makers working under uncertainty remains under documented. Our article explores the concept of community resilience in action to illustrate where community resilience in action is supported, hindered or ignored by the state and non-state organizations. Through an inductive epistemological approach, it draws examples from the exploratory fieldwork of two case studies and interviews in settlements in developmental contexts where the inhabitants, built environments and livelihoods have been severely affected following a hazardous event. Using observations and testimonies from Wayanad, a hill district in India affected by heavy monsoon floods in 2018 and 2019, and from marketplaces in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, following the 2010 earthquake, the article discusses how understandings of community resilience in action in post-disaster developmental contexts could contribute to enhancing institutional responses under uncertainty.