Public and private sector interventions in post-disaster resettlement: A case study of model villages in Pakistan

Abstract

Flooding is the most frequently occurring disaster in the world. In recent decades, climate change has been shown to be linked to a higher frequency of flood occurrences around the world. Every year, flooding displaces millions of people worldwide resulting in escalating vulnerabilities of exposed populations. Pakistan, in particular, is extremely vulnerable to climate change induced floods. It has seen a growing trend of disastrous flooding events in recent decades. The extreme flood event of 2010 (and similar events in the years since) have caused tremendous human and material losses. The construction of ‘model villages’ as a mitigating strategy to flooding has turned out to be an intervention of choice for both public and private sectors for the resettlement of exposed and vulnerable population. This strategy was initiated by the government, and then various non-government organizations (NGOs) followed suit with their own planning and development approaches. More than 200 model villages have been developed in Punjab province since the 2010 flood event. This book chapter revisits the model villages developed in 2011 to evaluate public and private intervention in the aftermath of the flooding and assess their resettlement approaches. For this purpose, four model villages were randomly selected in severely flood-affected districts of Punjab province. Two of the studied model villages were developed by NGOs, while the other two were developed by the provincial government’s disaster management authority. Expert interviews, focus group discussions, authors’ observations, and household surveys were conducted. A total of 145 relocated households were surveyed using structured questionnaires. The analysis shows model villages designed and developed by NGOs were more sustainable and resilient than the resettled communities in provincial government backed projects. It was found that livelihood and skill-development programs based on local markets, community mobilization, training, maintenance and operation of community services, and young and adult literacy programs were the predominant factors which made communities more resilient.