Drinking and sanitary water access resilience in the aftermath of hurricane Irma. Addressing the freshwater supply system post-disaster recovery in Saint-Martin (French West Indies), September 2017

Abstract

This paper analyses the resilience of the French territories of Saint-Martin by considering the issue of drinking and sanitary water supply system recovery in the aftermath of hurricane Irma. We understand resilience as a post-disaster recovery process (Reghezza & Rufat 2019). We address responses and coping strategies deployed by the institutions (local and national authorities, network operators, NGOs) as well as by the local communities and individuals. The fieldwork we carried out in Saint-Martin highlights the fact that the combination of institutional and inhabitants’ responses prevented a humanitarian disaster. On one hand, institutional stakeholders were able to implement effective and efficient coping strategies. On the other hand, inhabitants’ vulnerability to freshwater shortage risks was greatly reduced by an individual adaptation, built well upstream of Irma in response to local context. Our study confirms that networks are socio-technical systems embedded in a set of production and consumption practices. In this sense, drinking and sanitary water systems criticality is territorialized and individual resilience is rooted in “ordinary vulnerability”.