Disaster in Context of Crisis: Assessing the performance of community-based initiatives in urban disaster recovery

Urban areas are more vulnerable to human and economic losses from disasters. Natural and human-caused disasters persisted during the Covid-19 pandemic, putting urban resilience to the test. Community-based initiatives have been appraised in post-disaster recovery by several scholars; however, the performance of community-based initiatives has not been addressed when disasters happen in crisis. The objective of this research is to explain how a pre-existing context of crisis affects the performance of community-based initiatives in disaster recovery of the built environment. This is done through the case study of the Beirut Port explosion in 2020 that occurred amid a political and economic crisis, and a global covid-19 pandemic. 10 months prior to the explosion, a self-organized social movement united the diverse and fragmented Lebanese community and mobilized in urban spaces relying heavily on informed call to action on social media. Despite the socio-political instability and the limited healthcare and economic resources resulting from the crises, community-based initiatives performed well in disaster recovery. In-depth interviews were conducted with leaders of Community based initiatives (CBIs), as key informants. Qualitative primary data from those interviews was analysed and triangulated with secondary data and primary data from interviews with NGOs and Beneficiaries. Following the explosion, and in the absence of a disaster management strategy, CBIs emerged from the motivation of activists who shared altruistic values, patriotism and solidarity, invoked by the social movement. Formed of well-educated members with extensive personal networks, CBIs were characterized with individuality in acquiring resources, strategy, and type of outputs. Acknowledging their unique capacities and limited resources, CBIs were resourceful. They capitalized on their network strength and established partnerships with other groups who shared similar visions, to achieve larger goals. Moreover, through their networks, they were able to establish credibility and link to international organizations for funding. The crisis enabled CBIs with better organization capacities, where they built internal structure for operation and external structure for coordination. As a result of high networking capacity and increased motivation, CBIs were vital to the Beirut recovery efforts. They formed close relationships with the beneficiaries, who found in them a rescue from an incapable government. This relationship instilled a responsibility in CBIs who developed their recovery initiatives to urban recovery neighbourhood scale interventions. This research provides insights into academic literature. In crisis, the network strength of community-based initiatives relies heavily on the personal network of the core members and collaborations with other like-minded groups. Unlike cities in the global north, community-based initiatives in the global south do not have the opportunity to link to local institutions; instead, they link directly to international bodies. Moreover, for grassroot community-based initiatives, credibility is essential to acquiring those international funds. These findings can be applied to future disaster management frameworks, where it is advised that distribution of CBI efforts should be capacity-based and done from the ground up. Moreover, disaster management frameworks need to capitalize on the skilled human capital that has made itself available for disaster recovery.