Relocation as a last resort in the event of a disaster

Relocation is defined as a process whereby a community’s housing, assets, and public infrastructure are rebuilt in another location.

Relocation is sometimes perceived to be the best option after a disaster for one or more of the following reasons:
(1) People have already been displaced by the disaster

(2) Their current location is judged to be uninhabitable, or

(3) Relocation is considered the best option to reduce vulnerability to the risk of future disasters.

In fact, relocation may be appropriate when the disaster is the result of site-specific vulnerabilities. Informal settlements in urban areas, for instance, are often located on sites where topography makes the site’s vulnerabilities impossible to mitigate.

In rural areas, settlements on fault times or in flood zones have vulnerabilities that may also be impossible to address.

However, relocation is often not the right solution: not all risks are site-specific and relocation itself entails numerous risks. Finding adequate sites for relocating disaster-affected communities can be an enormous challenge. Unsuitable new sites can lead to lost livelihoods, lost sense of community and social capital, cultural alienation, poverty, and people abandoning the new sites and returning to the location of their original community. The economic, social, and environmental costs of relocation should be carefully assessed before the decision to relocate is finalized, and other mitigation options should be considered. For instance, sometimes relocating only a portion of an at-risk community may be sufficient.

Who Lives in Disaster-Prone Sites and Why?

The urban poor in particular often inhabit hazardous areas because they can’t afford to live elsewhere. The primary concern of people living in poverty is their immediate survival, which requires them to find affordable housing in close proximity to livelihood opportunities. For people with marginal incomes, even minor additional costs of rent, utilities, or transportation that might result from living in a safer location may be unaffordable. Safe and affordable sites are hard to find in areas where jobs are located, where land is likely to be scarce and prices higher. Poor urban dwellers often settle informally on public lands not suitable for development because of their inherent risk factors and then remain there for financial or political reasons until a disaster strikes.

Why Relocation Is Sometimes Necessary?

Disasters will continue to displace people, often leaving no alternative but relocation. Relocation of vulnerable communities to physically safer places is often the best way to protect them from future disasters. Some locations are inherently unsafe, e.g., floodplains, unstable hillsides, and areas where soil is likely to liquefy as a result of seismic tremors. In particular, informal settlements of the urban poor are often located on highly vulnerable sites. In some cases, a disaster may have changed the topography, making a community’s original site unsuitable for habitation. Finally, it may be too costly to provide safety to communities located in areas likely to be subject to future disasters. Risk-mapping is a tool that can provide data on the degree, probability, and characteristics of these risks. However, a relocation process that incorporates international lessons learned can prevent avoidable human suffering.

Unjustified Relocation

Relocation to new sites is often decided for “practical reasons” that ignore risk management considerations and result in a massive waste of financial and natural resources. Examples include:

Relocation to avoid rubble removal, simplify land tenure issues, or minimize the number of stakeholders “interfering” in the reconstruction project

Relocation to reduce construction costs, without accounting for the cost of basic infrastructure and services, which can result in the building of houses or entire settlements that are later abandoned, sold by beneficiaries, or left unoccupied, due to the lack of services or costs to acquire them

Risks and Challenges
1. Underestimation by decision makers of the social consequences of post-disaster relocation, in spite of the growing body of research that shows that it is rarely successful.
2. Loss of livelihoods, impoverishment, social and cultural alienation, loss of social coherence, increased morbidity, and loss of access to common property for the relocated community.
3. Conflicts and competition with hosting communities over scarce resources, such as land, food, fuel, water, and fodder for livestock.
4. Abandonment of relocation sites by relocated populations and return to areas where there may be inadequate provision for them or unsafe conditions. Failure of local officials to anticipate this event
5. Insufficient consideration of the option of providing incentives to encourage voluntary relocation.
6. Government inaccurately reporting that relocation has taken place voluntarily in order to avoid the preparation of social and environmental impact assessments and relocation action plans. 7. Failure to recognize and mitigate risks of reconstruction projects in the same location that entail land consolidation, major demolition, and development of new settlement.

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