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Community-based resilience building:normative meets narrative in Mbale,2010/2011David Harrison Jenkins a , Anthony Harris b , Abdul Abu Tair b ,Hilary Thomas b , Richard Okotel c , John Kinuthia b , Linus Mofor d

& Marga Quince ba University of Glamorgan , Trefforest Campus, RCT, Pontypridd ,CF37 1DL , UKb Geography , Glamorgan , Pontypridd , UKc Mbale CAP , Mbale , Ugandad UNIDO , Vienna , AustriaPublished online: 27 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: David Harrison Jenkins , Anthony Harris , Abdul Abu Tair , Hilary Thomas ,Richard Okotel , John Kinuthia , Linus Mofor & Marga Quince (2013) Community-based resiliencebuilding: normative meets narrative in Mbale, 2010/2011, Environmental Hazards, 12:1, 47-59, DOI:10.1080/17477891.2012.738641

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17477891.2012.738641

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Community-based resilience building: normative meets narrativein Mbale, 2010/2011

David Harrison Jenkinsa∗, Anthony Harrisb, Abdul Abu Tairb, Hilary Thomasb†,Richard Okotelc, John Kinuthiab, Linus Moford and Marga Quinceb

aUniversity of Glamorgan, Trefforest Campus, RCT, Pontypridd, CF37 1DL, UK; bGeography,Glamorgan, Pontypridd, UK; cMbale CAP, Mbale, Uganda; dUNIDO, Vienna, Austria

(Received 9 September 2011; final version received 5 October 2012)

This article provides a comparative analysis of normative and community-to-community-basedapproaches to resilience building. A narrative rendering of events in Bududa in 2010 isprovided through the lens of a community-to-community partnership. The comparison isthen achieved through a picture of a normative model for low-impact (cyclical), high-frequency disasters drawn from documentary resources. The narrative element is providedthrough a case study of the landslides in Bududa, in the Mbale region of Uganda in spring2010. This event killed over 300 people and led to the temporary displacement of as manyas 8000 and the permanent displacement of an undisclosed number. A preliminaryevaluation of the Mbale experience is offered, showing the limitations of normative models,describing current resilience-building activities and opening the current discussion withinthe Mbale Coalition against Poverty to public scrutiny.

Keywords: community; landslide; resilience

1. Introduction

This article considers ‘low-impact’ (cyclical), high-frequency disasters in the Mount Elgon regionof Uganda. A narrative element is provided through a case study of the landslides in Bududa,Mbale region of Uganda in spring 2010. Then documentary resources are drawn on to build apicture of a normative model for resilience building in community. As will be demonstrated,normative models do not provide the last word.

The context of this article is a developing community-to-community link between the Mbaleregion of Uganda and the Rhondda Cynon Taff district of South Wales. The link originates in thework of a UK development charity called PONT (the Partnership Overseas Network Trust1).There are over 100 such links between communities in Wales and Africa encouraged by theWales for Africa program of the Welsh Assembly Government and the Department for Inter-national Development’s Global Community Links program.2 A critical review of such approachesto development is provided by Anyimadu (2011). The generic form is also referred to as asset-based community development (Mathie & Cunningham, 2008).

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

∗Corresponding author. Email: dharrisonj@gmail.com†For the last five years of her life Prof Hilary Thomas worked tirelessly to serve the people of Mbale, theirculture and environment. When Hilary died in 2012 she had already set wheels in motion to address the situ-ation described in this paper, which we dedicate to her.

Environmental Hazards, 2013Vol. 12, No. 1, 47–59, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17477891.2012.738641

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Apart from the global citizenship agenda that is built through linking,3 many of these linkshave a development focus, commonly related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).Since 2005, PONT has developed a series of professional networks that bring together informedgroups at both ends of the link that target MDGs. In Mbale these links embrace non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) as well as the three district councils within the region and other represen-tatives of civil society. A description of the network, its modus operandi and values is provided byJenkins, Gateri, and Nakayenza (2009).

The network is developing a collaborative model that promotes joint, rather than several,approaches to the challenges faced by these communities. The Mbale Coalition againstPoverty (CAP) is an umbrella for multi-stakeholder partnerships that provide the integrationoften lacking in domestic government alone and acts as a check against corrupting influencesand inefficiency.4 Bringing people together like this is not necessarily always a ‘happy’process and different social groupings and institutions bring quite distinct and contrary perspec-tives. In this approach, rather than identify with one dimension of ‘community’, the network isopen to multiple voices and provides incentives for the various actors to talk through their differ-ences and agree actions.

For example, NGOs, which are severely critical of the District Health Authority, have in the last 6years been engaged in training many hundreds of voluntary community health workers to standardsdeveloped by the Authority in liaison with the PONT Primary Health Committee. This has led to theformation of a health committee within Mbale CAP where the different groups now plan and bargainover contingent health interventions. While there has been mutual learning, there remain conflictinginterests and perspectives and, of course, participants are not all equally powerful.

At the time these events unfolded, there had been no explicit CAP dialogue about communityvulnerability to environmental hazards and no professionals from the UK visiting Mbale counter-parts to develop disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience building. Clearly, such a community-to-community approach could be available.

2. Methodology

This case study is informed by a documentary review and by the reflections of observers of,victims of and an actor in the Bududa events. Five of the co-authors have visited the Bududa land-slide site and the nearby Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp at Bulucheke at different times.One of the co-authors was instrumental in setting up the camp counselling scheme. One of theauthors is a member of the Project Board of the UN Territorial Approach to Climate Change(TACC) in Uganda and one other author is a member of the Integrated Territorial Climate PlanCommittee. These roles allowed access to a wide variety of documents and privity to discussionson topics alluded to in this article.

Walking through the camp and the landslide areas contributed to an understanding of theissues (Moles, 2008). In the immediate aftermath of the landslide, displaced families were con-sulted sensitively with the assistance of psycho-social counsellors. Interviews were held withthe LC35 on site and with officials of the district authorities. Eighteen months later, two of theauthors revisited the Bulucheke site and also visited the refugee camp at Kiriandongo and inter-viewed representatives of those who had been relocated. At this time also, interviews were under-taken with three groups of farmers in the foothills of Mount Elgon.

First we describe the events that took place in Bududa in March 2010 and subsequently. Thenwe develop a normative model using documentary sources and interviews with officials. In ouranalysis we then show how various norms are subverted and offer practical illustrations ofwhat hinders or enhances community-based disaster risk reduction and its incorporation into awider national framework.

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3. Landslides at Bududa

The events described in this article take place in Uganda, a country that is rated 143rd of 177countries in the 2010 United Nations Human Development Index. In the previous index it hadbeen rated 154th and this improvement was partly the result of consistent economic growthunder the Museveni government and partly a higher degree of resilience to the global downturnof 2008/2009 relative to other impoverished countries. Nevertheless, Uganda is a very poor country.

Much of Uganda’s wealth is found in services, manufacturing and construction sectors and isconcentrated in the metropolitan centre and south west of the country. The discovery of oil in thesouth west region promises further disparity in wealth with northern and eastern regions. Officialdata on Uganda’s poverty belie the fact that it is not evenly distributed. As one commentator observes,

20% of the people are locked in chronic poverty and inequality is increasing. It has one of the highestrates of population growth in the world (at 3.3% per annum) with the highest fertility rate evident inthe lowest wealth quintile. There is a widening inequality among and within regions...

Irish Aid, Country Strategy Paper, 2007–9: Uganda

Many of those locked in chronic poverty live in the study region of Mbale, which is located inthe poorer east and comprises the districts of Mbale, Manafwa and Bududa. Mbale is one of theprincipal towns of the east populated mainly by the Bagisu people. These clans, 26 of them, liveon and around the Mount Elgon massif, an area that extends into Kenya (where they are knownas the Babukusu). The people enjoy a shared culture and are called collectively Bamasaaba: theirculture has recently found renewed expression in the appointment of an Umukuuka (grandfather).

The fertile Mbale region is dominated by agricultural production. Coffee is an important exportcrop for international markets but significant trade occurs on a wide variety of agricultural productswith Southern Sudan6 along the Gulu road and also east into Kenya (much of this trade on blackmarkets). Most people are engaged in small scale farming and Mbale is an important centre forthis trade and related services. Potentially Mbale is well placed as a hub in the East African Com-munity and ratification in 2010 of the Common Market Protocol by all the Partner States offers note-worthy opportunities. At the same time, Mbale is also touched by those vulnerabilities, described inthe following paragraphs, for which the horn of Africa is most commonly known in the global north.The journey from Mbale to Dadaab7 is a mere 580 miles at similar latitude.

The landslides can be attributed to a range of natural and human-induced factors. The recentevent was severe but was by no means the first, there have been others since8 and more and greaterare forecast (Kyalimpa, 2010). The title of Knapen’s paper aptly summarises the situation atBududa: Landslides in a densely populated county at the foot of Mount Elgon.

Harris (2010) describes the geomorphology that triggers these events. Mt Elgon is an extinctvolcano on the Ugandan/Kenyan border. Around the flank areas, the uppermost strata of massiveagglomerate layers (Davies, 1956) form resistant high cliffs. High rainfall and consequent rapidfluvial incision in the area have created very steep slopes in the ancient and deeply weathered pre-Cambrian basement underneath. As a consequence, recurrent landslides are an inherent problemaround the flanks and particularly in Manjiya County where most slopes can be classified as mar-ginally stable and where many valleys exhibit frequent landslide sites. The soils have low shearstrength and failure is related to slope shape, land use and accumulation of water over subsurfacediscontinuities (Kitutu, Muwanga, Poesen, & Deckers, 2009).

The densely populated area is highly vulnerable. In this article we are as concerned with con-tributory social dimensions and their relationship to community resilience. Large families are acultural aspiration with high birth rates leading to a major problem with subsequent subdivisionof land. According to the most recent estimate, population density in this district allegedly is six

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times the national average. Farmers cultivate every inch of land they can obtain and the districthas no environment officer. Disputes over land are frequent and often violent.9 Literacy ratesare very low10, a fact that has been cited both in relation to the intensive land use and in relationto failure to adequately prepare for landslide events.

The removal of almost all of the original, protective natural forest is driven by agriculturalland shortages and domestic fuel wood needs, significantly increasing landslide vulnerabilityand soil erosion. Prohibitive levels of poverty and food insecurity are exacerbated by decliningsoil nutrient levels and agricultural yields (Pender, Jagger, Nkonya, & Sserunkuuma, 2004).Civil infrastructure is limited with a paucity of good roads and healthcare facilities.

Catastrophic landslides have periodically occurred following extreme rainfall events generatedby climatic variation. These are linked to El Nino events manifested through the Indian OceanDipole. For example, extreme rainfall events between 1997 and 1999 resulted in around 50 landslides(Knapen et al., 2006). The landslide at Nametsi in Bududa on 1 March 2010 was triggered by severalconsecutive days of heavy rain which occurred with an early start to the wet season in 2010.

A number of publications document these events at Bududa,11 while some provide an analysisof the immediate causes and effects.12 The final report of the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund(DREF) summarized the extent of the impact as follows13:

Heavy rains in Uganda that started late February 2010 resulted into floods, water logging and land-slides affecting more than 50,000 people across the country. . . . In Bududa landslides and floodsoccurred in the areas around Mt. Elgon following five days of consecutive heavy downpours resultingin death, displacement of people, destruction of property (including burying a health centre), destroy-ing food crops, roads, and sanitation systems. An estimated 400 people were killed in this area alonebut so far only 105 bodies have been recovered... The affected people of these villages (now1,424 households or 8,177 people) are in Bududa and hosted at the Bulucheke IDP camp managedby the office of the Prime Minister and run by URCS.

The documentary evidence discloses little by way of national planning, although the UNICEFlays claim to engagement in some planning that took place.14 Other hydrometeorological eventsin recent years in Uganda have led to a deepening understanding of the disaster risk reductioncycle. For example, flooding in neighbouring districts in 2007 was followed in January 2008by a cluster workshop15 at nearby Soroti district.

As to local preparations prior to the landslide event, there is very little evidence beyond theestablishment of the District Disaster Management Committee (DDMC). Given that the vulner-ability of the population and the extent of the particular risk had been well documented (e.g.by Knapen), this might appear surprising. However, apart from a prior ‘paper’ existence, it isnow clear that the DDMC was marshalled only for the relief operation and from the descriptionin the DREF report the DDMC appears to have been marginal even to these operations. Further-more, one official, while acknowledging the high risk of recurrence, explained that the DDMChad not convened since the end of relief operations through lack of funds.

This is not yet to suggest that the authorities in Uganda have been negligent in some way,though some reports relate the disappearance of funds.16 However, we are confident that theactual response to events was determined by financial considerations and that the normative infra-structure was by-passed.

3.1 Resilient responses

If the causes are well known and attended by a degree of consensus, notions about resilientresponse to the vulnerability are potentially conflicting. One approach is identified in a NewVision article on 30 March 2010:

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Mary Goretti Kitutu, the environmental information systems specialist at the National EnvironmentManagement Authority, said the Government has to compel people in the landslide-prone areas toplant forests.17

An alternative is expressed by Dr. Festus Bagoora, an expert on weathering and land for-mations at the Department of Geography at Makerere University. He told IPS that

...he and other experts submitted a study for the National Environment Management Authoritywarning of areas where landslides are more likely to happen but no action was taken....(and that)they had recommended the relocation of people in (sic) areas they considered to be more prone tofloods and landslides.18

Of course such options as afforestation and relocation are not mutually exclusive. Two aspectsare noteworthy here. The first is how often a technical-rational epistemology characteristic of latemodernism can embrace reference to compulsion while making no reference to community con-sultation or empowerment. Indeed, one of the professionals engaged at district level emphasizedin discussion the ignorance of the ‘local people’ as part of a motivation for enforced relocation fortheir own good.19 The second is how readily such options become fodder for politics. The story ofthis event is greatly influenced by rivals espousing one or other of the proposed approaches.

Certainly the relocation option was seen as preferred government policy in Bududa as early as20 March and had even been voiced prior by government as a solution to the whole of the region’sproblems

Officials said the government was seeking land to permanently resettle the over 700 affected familiesas the region is highly prone to landslides.

Meanwhile, the government has ordered villagers in neighbouring districts to move to a centrallocation and await resettlement.

But some have defied the order....20

The lack of participation by the displaced is witnessed by an

...April 15 petition to the Prime Minister, residents of Bulucheke camp alleged they had never beenconsulted by district leaders on matters of resettlement but rather learnt of the arrangements throughthe media.21

Counsellors within the camp interviewed in May 2010 identified the considerable anxiety oftheir clients about the relocation proposal, partly because of concerns about proposed destinationsbut also because of their attachment to place. If there is a limited willingness to move even in thelight of heightened risk, the normative question becomes, ‘how should services and governanceimprove the adaptability and resilience to the vulnerability?’ Compulsory permanent relocationshould be the last option and reserved for the highest categories of enduring risk.

However, relocation was the only plan. The camp at Bulucheke was closed to ensuremaximum compliance by survivors and on 20 October 2010 the Office of the Prime Ministerissued a press release. The gist of the plan:

To avoid such tragedies in future, especially on the heavily degraded slopes, the government planned to per-manently relocate and resettle the survivors in a new area. The land was identified in the new district of Kir-yandongo. According to the resettlement plan spearheaded by the Department of Disaster Preparedness andRefugees in the Office of the Prime Minister, each family has been resettled on 2.5 acres of land.

. . . The resettlement plan aims at resettling all the displaced persons so that the camp is closed.22

(Emphasis added)

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It was estimated that 1500 people of 8000 were relocated to Kiryandongo in Western Ugandaby 29 October. Among many of those remaining there was fear of the proposed move and a wishto stay close to their ancestral origins.23 The press release comments improbably that

“People who were initially resisting were first to load their property on the trucks,” said a DisasterManagement Officer in the Office of the Prime Minister.

Further,

The LCV (the elected district chairman) “... scoffed at people who he said wanted to benefit from thetragedy by sabotaging the resettlement plan. He said that government should investigate such personsand that disciplinary action should be taken if any are found culpable of wrong doing.”

Interestingly among the people wanting allegedly to ‘to benefit from the tragedy by sabota-ging the resettlement plan’ were the local MPs. A clear political divide had opened up in thecontext of presidential and district elections. One outcome of the conduct of normal politicswas the defeat of the District Chairman in February 2011 elections.

Kiryandongo was not a land without a people waiting for a people without land. It is less denselypopulated and has been used as a refugee destination in the past. However, there were and remainserious problems at the location.24 An interesting footnote was provided by NTVon the anniversaryof the landslide. It is well known in the communities that many of those relocated have subsequentlyreturned to the eastern region. Some are back living on the slopes; others have found plots elsewherein neighbouring communities, while others have turned up in the slums of nearby Mbale. Scanda-lously, it was reported that some had been approached by land speculators that had paid survivorsto acquire the land parcels donated by government. There were no data quantifying this phenomenon,which clearly identifies the displaced as villains. In interviews with refugees at Kiryandongo and offi-cials at Bulucheke in November 2011, this story was vehemently denied. However, it was acknowl-edged that ‘many’ had returned to Bududa, and that of the 650 families that had remained atKiryandongo only 100 had been housed (though the houses had not been finished), that watersupply was scant and of poor quality and that a promised health centre had not been provided.

Whatever the merits of relocation, it is clear that survivor participation in decision making wasweak/absent. It was also revealed that village council planners (VCPs) took no part in operations.No money was committed to the Bududa area beyond the relief operation so that the IDP campsite itself was unusable in February 2012. In fact local leaders interviewed in November 2011 saythat the Government’s promise to clean the site at Bulucheke has not been fulfilled and that infuture the use of land for landslide victims would be resisted by local people. The landslidesite at Nametsi has seen no further intervention after the initial rescue mission.

The Kiryandongo project suggests firm government action and a commitment to (ungrateful)survivors, albeit the financial commitment was minimal. However, it seems quite plausible thatrelief operations and their aftermath were managed to achieve political objectives. The slopesof Mount Elgon provide high-quality coffee that is largely owned and managed by co-operativefarmers and such families are the victims of the landslides. The government has made no secret ofits preference to see the emergence of large-scale, coffee agribusiness.25

4. The normative approach in Uganda

The Oxford Dictionary Online defines normative as

Establishing, relating to, or deriving from a standard or norm, especially of behaviour.

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The normative is the way in which societies define that which they consider to be appropriate.In governance terms, this implies constitutions and rule making, and more generally in sociologyit relates to institutions defined as

a complex of positions, roles, norms and values lodged in particular types of social structures andorganising relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to fundamental problems inproducing life-sustaining resources, in reproducing individuals, and in sustaining viable societalstructures within a given environment. (Turner, 1997)

The development of normative approaches to the problem of DRR identified in Ugandaappears as both ethical and rational: the possibility is that the mere declaration of the normativewill, in some sense, guide behaviour and whether or not it actually does, it certainly provides alens through which behaviours can be judged.

It has long been observed that constitutional reform can fail to produce institutional reform orconduct. North (1990) observes ‘the persistence of so many aspects of a society in spite of a totalchange in the rules.’ The real world, and most especially that part of the real world that is experi-encing or emerging from disaster, is a messy place that defies attempts to regiment responses. It isnot just dislocation. It is as much that normal politics are not suspended during such events andthat consequently the normative is vulnerable to manipulation by power. The narrative of theBududa events is testimony to this statement.

The twofold point of narrative vis-a-vis the normative then is to

. Reveal departures from the normative (and reveal those whose ethics and rationality deter-mines what is actually done).

. And disclose inadequacies within the normative.

Of course inadequacies within the normative are also rooted in epistemological premises. Weare aware that what passes as normative within much professional literature is heavily weightedby the pragmatic and technical and that another starting point might yield quite different norms.As an example, consider an emphasis on community rather than technical resilience. We are, inthe words of Alasdair MacIntyre, dependent rational animals (MacIntyre, 1999). That is to say,human beings rely on ‘networks of giving and receiving’ for their existence and necessarily suchnetworks have a community dimension. The very facts of our animal vulnerability and disabilitylead to dependence on others and consequently to the possibility of ‘shared virtues of acknowl-edged dependence’. Successful communities develop these shared virtues, conscious of the factthat such networks of giving and receiving are also ‘always structures of unequal distributions ofpower’. (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 102) In this model, the successful building of resilience is closelyrelated to the development of such virtues. It will take a separate paper to unpack this hypothesisin relation to developing community norms in resilience building, but it should be clear that insuch a perspective the normative would be greater than the sum of technical, professional andpurely organizational inputs and must embrace culture, values and mores.

Even from a purely technical perspective, there is no lack of advice about how resiliencebuilding should be done. A litany of guides26 outlines a framework in which normative processesare professionally27 implemented. It is straightforward to acquire a normative framework from theliterature and we reproduce a sub-Hyogo model from Twigg (2006) as Table 1.

Pan African progress towards the adoption of the normative was celebrated in summer2010 with the adoption of a programme of action for the implementation of the AfricaRegional Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction by the African Union. In Uganda, host to theAfrican Union in July 2010, the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugees within the

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Office of the Prime Minister established a plan to develop a Uganda ‘DRR National Platform’.This plan is a distillation of the normative trickling down from the global discussion. It isvery close to the framework provided by Twigg, reproducing the five thematic areas andmost of the components.

The normative approach also recognizes the need for local engagement. As Sphere puts it,‘Programmes should be designed to build upon local capacity and to avoid underminingpeople’s own coping strategies’. Indeed, the Uganda National Platform envisages ‘district levelstakeholders’ and advocates ‘appointment of DRR focal points at district level... linking themup with a National platform focal point for information sharing and coordination’.

Furthermore, the DRR focal point at Bududa, the DDMC, also recognizes the need of localengagement and envisaged co-opting a network of trained VCPs to provide a lowest tier.

However, these local arrangements are very much part of a centralized top-down commandstructure and fall well short of community-based ownership on the Mbale CAP developmentmodel and community-to-community approaches more generally. A senior official of theDDMC explained that the structure exists largely on paper only and that the District had receivedno budget. Nevertheless, it provides a departure point for evaluation against the narrative and,more importantly, opens the potential door to real community participation.

A joint communique of the Second African Ministerial Conference on Disaster RiskReduction in April 2010 acknowledges:

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies and institutional mechanisms do exist at various degrees ofcompleteness in African countries. However, their effectiveness is limited.

Table 1. Sub-Hyogo model.

Thematic area Main components

1. Governance † Policy and planning† Legal and regulatory systems† Resources and capacities† Integration with development† Institutional mechanisms, capacities and structures† Political commitment† Accountability and participation

2. Risk assessment † Hazards/risk data and analysis† Vulnerability and impact data/indicators† Early warning systems† Scientific and technical innovation

3. Knowledge and education † Information management and sharing† Education and training† Public awareness

4. Risk management and vulnerabilityreduction

† Environmental and natural resource management: climatechange adaptation

† Sustainable livelihoods† Social protection† Financial instruments† Structural and technical measures† Planning regimes

5. Disaster preparedness and response † Organizational capacities and coordination† Preparedness and contingency planning† Emergency response mechanisms† Participation and voluntarism

Source: Twigg (2006), published by DFID DRR Interagency Working Group.

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Effectiveness is so limited, in fact, that it is generally accepted that disaster preparedness inmany developing countries, particularly those in Africa, is ‘woefully inadequate’ (Steiner,2009). National governments in many of these countries do not seem to give the issue of disasterpreparedness much priority or resource. In the case of Uganda the total budget for DRR in 2010allocated to the National Platform was less than £1/4 million. It is for others to decide whether thisis reasonable in the light of Uganda’s competing priorities, but we can say that high expectationsof the normative would be rash under these conditions.

5. Analysis: narrative meets normative

In this analysis we have selected various norms from the Twigg model and offer practical illus-trations of what hinders or might enhance resilience building.

For themes 4 and 5 (Risk management & vulnerability reduction and Disaster preparedness &response) the use of resources is key. In the presence of capacity constraints, resource allocation iswont to be a political process. In this process, the self-interested agendas of competing elites andindividuals tend to be camouflaged and it is often difficult to determine the true intention of par-ticular actions. One tradition in political science28 describes this phenomenon as ‘rationalisationmasquerading as rationality’.

In the Bududa narrative, we see how the choice between technical and rational solutions mightserve quite different agendas. For example, the decision to relocate large numbers of people toKiryandongo can be viewed as a humanitarian act. However, the decision also promotes the gov-ernment’s agenda in relation to coffee agribusiness by weakening the powerful co-operatives anddisregards the wishes of the majority in the locality. There was little appetite among survivors torelocate to Kiryandongo. The locally elected chairman that advocated relocation was removedfrom office. Many who were relocated voted with their feet and returned to the Mbale region.Interviews with anonymous persons who remain in Kiryandongo reveal that they were givenlittle option and feel aggrieved. Indeed having experienced the trauma of landslide andIDP camp they now languish in extremely poor conditions as two of the authors witnessed inNovember 2011.

As we have also seen, the decision to relocate survivors to Kiryandongo resulted inno resources being made available for DRR capacity building and the demotivation ofthe DDMC. The decision seems to have subverted the Government’s own DRR NationalPlatform.

Interviews were also held in November 2011 with peoples who live and farm in the MountElgon foothills. These interviews reveal that there is growing fear for personal safety alongsidea stubborn resolve to remain. In these circumstances it would seem sensible to follow MaryGoretti Kitutu’s advice to plant more trees and stabilize the hillsides even if relocation was apartial option. Indeed, as part of the community-to-community approach, a Welsh charity andMbale CAP have been working since 2010 with co-operative coffee farmers to plant a milliontrees in the region, which will give coffee shade protection in the hotter dry seasons as well assoil stabilization in the heavy rains. This initiative provides resources for environmental andnatural resource management and sustainable livelihoods within theme 4. Of course, this initiativecould not occur without tacit central government consent and perhaps holds the promise of a fullerdialogue between community and government in the future.

More specifically on the governance question (theme 1) it is apparent that there was no reallocal participation in the response to the landslide disaster. Neither the DDMC nor the villagecouncil planning teams were mobilized. The relief operations were conducted by internationalteams and after their departure the focus of operations moved to Kiryandongo. As a consequencevital learning by the community that would assist in building preparedness for subsequent events

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was hindered. This is not to say that there was no learning, but what learning that occurred waslost to official channels; NGOs and fledgling community-based organizations (CBOs) comprisedof volunteers became the repositories of this learning.

This is a phenomenon that we have observed in relation to development work more generally.Mbale CAP is largely a coalition of district councils and NGOs. Interestingly in villages whereNGOs are not operative, volunteer workers become important focal points. In some instances,we see emerging co-operation between these volunteers and the LC1 and LC2 political represen-tatives at cell and parish level. In one case, this collaboration has resulted in the materialization ofa CBO that has also drawn in other active members of the community (representing a women’sgroup, a new nursery school, a progressive mental health association etc.).

Mbale CAP has been quick to identify the potential here and it is possible to see an emergingnetwork of CBOs. The temptation would be to establish a blueprint for such a development andthere is some momentum behind this idea. In the authors’ view this would be a serious error. Ourhypothesis is that vital CBOs grow from the bottom up. There are already failed attempts todevelop CBOs in Uganda from the top down as the DDMC’s village resilience planning dis-closes29. A bottom-up approach allows the initiative to rest with the communities themselves.Mbale CAP and similar organizations can seek ways to encourage and build the capacity ofsuch young groups. Indeed this is important in the future as a counterweight to the developingcapacity of professional organizations at the district level.

Alongside current operations to support the development of professional services at the dis-trict level, PONT/CAP might provide resources to such CBOs and encourage their joint workingwithin theme 1, for example in planning. For instance, in relation to resilience mapping it is poss-ible to imagine a fully functional GIS at district level informed by community risk mappingundertaken within communities and preliminary discussions with officials have begun tospecify this. Mbale CAP might facilitate this, incorporating the experiences and perspectivesof local affected populations who are likely – as in the case of the Bududa landslides – to bewell aware that the given event occurs repeatedly. There is also likely to be an awareness ofcertain, if not all, of the factors contributing to the disaster.

A community-to-community approach might involve a more effective approach to Twigg’stheme of Knowledge and Education. A comment by a local Bududa politician was that localpeople do not have access to scientific and technical journals, where much research on suchevents may be published; thus, the very populations affected by disasters such as landslides,flooding; volcanic eruptions, etc. may be unaware that they are a well-known case study!Many landslide-prone regions have been investigated and reported by researchers of thatcountry (e.g. Ngecu & Ichang’I, 1999; Ngecu, Nyamai, & Erima, 2004) and yet ‘international’researchers appear to be foremost in western minds.

The work carried out by the Knapen team identified the geological, geomorphological, hydro-meteorological, population and land (mis-)use factors contributing to the landslide events in theBududa area. Other research on landslides from other areas within Sub-Saharan Africa enumer-ates very similar background, preparatory and triggering factors. Such findings suggest a wide-spread gap in the communication of scientific and technical information to district authoritiesand from there to affected communities.

In the case of PONT and its partners in CAP, communication pathways between social groupsmight usefully be focussed in the recently formed Eastern Inter University Research Councilbased in Mbale. This would assist in the co-production of knowledge, anchoring academic knowl-edge into (or close to) the affected area. Where such work has been carried out by local or nationalworkers it might increase the standing of such persons in the eyes of government, speed the build-up of resilience and reduce costs otherwise incurred by parachuting in international experts withlittle knowledge of the complexities of the ‘messy place’. The locality where the particular

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disaster repeatedly occurs then becomes the locale of expertise and undermines the notion thatonly the sophisticated (westerner, professional and official) can be this.

6. Conclusion: community-to-community resilience

The community-to-community approach consists in partnership between communities, theexchange of experts and the sharing of knowledge in the pursuit of agreed aims. The motor forthe development work described in this article is a partnership between Rhondda Cynon Taff Dis-trict in Wales and the Mbale region of Uganda. Within Mbale collaboration between district gov-ernment and locally based NGOs with regional and national support is focussed in Mbale CAP.

Prior to the events described here, some of the work undertaken by Mbale CAP had fallenwithin the thematic areas identified by Twigg (theme 1) on the development/resilience boundary.In addition to the collaboration with district health officials to train voluntary community healthworkers described in the Introduction: training was also provided for the E&A function at MbaleHospital; emergency service personnel were trained and an ambulance service launched; a pre-liminary needs analysis for the training of police officers had been undertaken and discussionswere underway regarding the development of fire services (a fire engine is being shipped toMbale in 2012); mapping the district with GPS has been modelled,30 the first part of a trainingprogramme for officers has been conducted (Farthing and Ware, 2010) and further developmentcommenced early in 2012.

Since the landslide, the PONT network commissioned a baseline survey that was conducted inthe impacted communities in 2011. This has identified specific and urgent needs of victims as wellas identifying important community assets vital to the development of community-based resili-ence. A school-based agro-forestry project intended to identify good practice will be extendedand vulnerability mapping with NGO partners will begin in 2012.

The largest-scale project to date is the TACC, one of a series of pilot projects for a globalUNDP-UNEP programme. This programme is part funded by the Welsh Government, the UKDepartment for International Development, and the Danish International Development Agency.A ‘Regional Climate Change Forum’, incorporating Mbale CAP, has been established to facilitatedialogue and coordination among stakeholders in the design of adaptation and mitigation strat-egies. The newly elected chairman of Bududa District is keen to see resilience planningadopted as part of this initiative.31

These various enterprises together with independent activity like a training programme orga-nized by the International Committee of the Red Cross on resilience building and a 6-week visit tothe region by a senior Welsh manager specializing in disaster management have provided thebasis for a more co-ordinated approach by Mbale CAP with the prospect of a re-vitalized DDMC.

One of the key features of the kind of community-to-community approach that we have beendescribing here is that it might develop a normative model that is defined and embedded withincommunities. In our view, the starting point is community building.

What is clear from the narrative is that different agendas did not dissolve in the face of tragedyand that contested meanings remain the only real norm.

Notes1. http://pont-mbale.org.uk/main/index.php.2. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/communitylinks.3. See http://www.ukowla.org.uk/.4. This kind of activity is recognized and promoted by the EU Commission’s Non-State Actors and Local

Authorities in Development Programme.5. An elected representative at the sub-district level.

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6. About $1 bn per annum. See http://allafrica.com/stories/201102080125.html.7. Dadaab was the focal point in Kenya for refugees in the drought of 2011.8. The most significant in Sironko District resulted in 40 deaths in August 2011.9. According to the Mbale District Land Board, over 3400 cases involving land disputes, many of them

ending up in machete fights have been recorded. Cited in NGO report, Bududa IDP Situation and HowBest To Help In Future Calamities, 29 October 2010.

10. Bududa was the second worst performing district in Uganda in the 2009 Primary Leaving Examin-ations (PLE). Only 18 of 2206 candidates scored Division One. Ibid.

11. Reports of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and International Federation ofRed Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) are available on Reliefweb: see http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/srch.nsf/doc304SearchResults?OpenForm&query=elgon&view=rwrwb&offset=25&hits=25&sortby=rwpubdate-rwpubdatedisplay&sortdirection=descending&mode=simpleall. A series of useful links tokey documents are provided at http://www.ugandaclusters.ug/disasterprep.htm. The ALNAP site pro-vides a few relevant resources.

12. Farthing and Ware (2010); ISP papers; A sister paper (Harris, Developing Disaster Risk ReductionStrategies for Landslide Mitigation in Eastern Uganda through the use of a Community DevelopmentNetwork) examine the geographical and environmental antecedents of the disaster.

13. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EDIS-8A6N5C?OpenDocument&query=elgon.14. Such emergency aid efforts represent the culmination of a UNICEF response and preparedness plan

that was developed jointly with the Ugandan Government in 2009.15. http://www.alnap.org/pool/files/erd-3603-method.pdf.16. http://allafrica.com/stories/201009090956.html.17. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/MUMA-8438ZL?OpenDocument&query=elgon.18. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50612.19. From the perspective of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, this attitude fails the test of misericordia: it might

show pity but with condescension.20. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/MUMA-84393D?OpenDocument&query=elgon.21. http://allafrica.com/stories/201009090956.html.22. http://www.opm.go.ug/news.php.23. Bududa IDP Situation and How Best To Help In Future Calamities, 29 October 2010, COD Associates.24. ibid.25. See, for example, the reports of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority at http://www.

ugandacoffee.org/index.php?page&a=15.26. While the Hyogo framework is foremost, the Sphere Charter and a series of derivative and complemen-

tary guides supplements and contextualises, for example relevant in the Bududa context might be aGuide to Improving Disaster Resilience of Mountain Communities, 2008, EU Focus and Reconstruc-tion Handbook, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, http://www.gfdrr.org/gfdrr/.

27. A series of guides for sectoral professional input is also available. See, for example, The built environ-ment professions in disaster risk reduction and response, a guide for humanitarian agencies, 2009,RICS, UK.

28. Starting with Machiavelli, and continuing through Nietzche, Foucault and most recently Flyvberg in apenetrating analysis of decision making at Aalborg town council: Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality andpower: Democracy in practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

29. Indeed there is well-documented failure of other decentralization programmes in Uganda, partlyascribed to ‘corruption, patronage and central resistance to decentralisation’: see Steiner (2006).

30. When the tragedy unfolded in March, NASA contacted PONT to get an initial fix on the location.31. Minutes of the TACC Project Board, December 2011.

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