Paper details

Paper authors	Sara Bernardo
In panel on	Aligning Large Scale Development Programs with Community Resilience
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Natural disasters are only disasters when an extreme event interacts with societies characterized by a high level of pre-existing vulnerability.
Sub-Saharan Agrarian Societies, with scarce financial and technological resources and exposed to global dynamics, belong to the most exposed. Their numerous crises and preconditions of chronic vulnerability explain why extreme natural events so often turn into natural disasters.
In continuous social processes vulnerabilities are accumulated through history. Natural disasters cannot be seen as isolated events nor as limited to a specific period of time and space. They are part of a spiralling cyclical dynamic where pre- and post-disaster constantly coexist and perpetually feed on each other. Disaster precedes and follows disaster. Extreme natural events are not exceptional, but rather part of the territorial dynamics.
Post-disaster agriculture is pre-disaster agriculture, and vice-versa, and to assure a faster return to farming activities after a disruption the chronic vulnerability of these societies must be addressed.
Unconditional cash transfers via mobile money services, such as M-Pesa and mKesh, can approach the different dimensions of vulnerability in a systemic way and without interfering with the societal dynamics, inter and intra social relationships and self-organisation of these societies, unlike external other interventions.
They not only enable a faster return to agriculture after a disruption, but they can also be articulated with a basic income as this helps to tackle the chronic vulnerability of these societies and empower their social reproduction, thereby increasing their resilience.

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