Investigation of the Institutions Formed and Empowered from Disaster Risk Governance Policies: Case Studies from Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Maldives

Abstract

Regardless of the country, communities are highly vulnerable and exposed to disasters induced by natural hazards. There is a number of disaster risk management mechanisms in place to mitigate and address disasters. A question unanswered regarding the disaster risk management mechanisms is why the damage and destruction due to disasters are not getting decreased and why are the same errors getting repeated. Hence, it is required to evaluate the effectiveness of these disaster risk management mechanisms to better tackle disasters. When understanding the disaster risk management mechanisms there are policies, which govern the mechanisms, and there are institutions, which operate, empowered and defined from these policies. Institutions that govern, plan, address and response to disasters are different and have different mechanisms of work. Networking, coordination, and dependencies of the institutions are a critical factor in disaster risk management. This research paper analyses the empowerment of institutions and identifies the placement of institutions in risk management mechanisms comparatively. The research study is based on case studies from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and the Maldives. A number of community visits and institutional visits were conducted in three countries for the data collection of the research work. It was observed that in the above-mentioned countries, different approaches, techniques, and processes are used for disaster risk management. Hence, initially, this research study attempts to holistically understand the overall scenario of policies in place for disaster risk governance. As the next step, all the institutions were mapped and summarized for analysing. The outputs from the research work can be used to understand the interdependencies of an institution in the disaster management mechanisms and to evaluate the involvement of each institution in disaster risk management.