Urban governance and disaster risk reduction in the Caribbean: the experiences of Oxfam GB

The reality of supporting community-based urban disaster risk reduction is daunting. This paper provides a cross-cultural analysis of the experiences of Oxfam GB in supporting urban community-based disaster risk reduction in Haiti, Guyana and the Dominican Republic. The paper focuses on the efforts of Oxfam GB and its local partners to overcome the determining influence of local governance on who benefits from interventions, and the longevity of positive outcomes. The most successful projects built on strong pre-existing partnerships with buy-in from local and municipal government, promoted longevity in physical and social infrastructure through dual use investments that had an everyday as well as a disaster risk reduction purpose, and integrated technological and lay focus exercises to generate local participation as well as provide baselines for project planning. Overall, however, disaster risk reduction was constrained by a lack of vision and funding constraints, which prevented root causes in the wider urban and regional environment or political economy to be tackled.