'Disaster passed'. Resilient Caribbean futures via shared knowledge of recent disasters.

The 'Small Island Developing States' (SIDS) of the Caribbean are at the frontline of our changing environment and strategies to respond and cope with their consequences are now of paramount importance. The damage from the hurricanes of 2017 demonstrate starkly the challenge such countries face in dealing with recurrent high intensity hazards; on average the Caribbean incurs $835 million of losses from hurricanes per annum. This is in addition to the challenges posed by 'everyday' risks e.g. slope stability, water resources and the rainy season where longer term planning is blighted by the annualised expenditure subsequently incurred. Swift, strong, and inclusive recovery reduces impact on livelihoods and well-being and improves resilience towards future events. Attention to re-building strong physical infrastructure is important, but, long term benefits accumulate faster when strategies are inclusive and clearly tailored to the local cultural, social and physical environment (Hallegatte et al., 2018). This underpins the 'leave no one behind' strategy of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and demands disaster risk reduction strategies that place a strong emphasis on a wide range of knowledges as set out by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).
Our recent research includes three fundamental findings: (1) cultural responses to hazardous events in the Caribbean contain powerful knowledge about impacts, response and recovery and (2) the process of their transmission provides a strong mechanism to include communities in their own preparedness and recovery. (3) the historical as well as the recent past contains important knowledge that deepens understanding of how and why people place themselves in areas of high risk (problems) but reveals important strategies or moments when national and international response acted to counteract the impacts of hazardous events (solutions).
The aim of this 'Follow-on-Fund' proposal is to share these findings to highlight the importance of cultural and historical knowledge in disaster risk reduction in the Caribbean. We want to put our research to work to help shape effective strategies, both directly in a country where they are responding to future hydro-meteorological risks while recovering from a geophysical disaster (Montserrat) and indirectly in the United Kingdom via agencies responsible for providing support and advice during and after hazardous events.

We will create a new exhibit for communities on Montserrat, working throughout with MVO, involving the Montserrat Red Cross and Montserrat National Trust to access a wide cross-section of local views. However, we want to push this engagement further: our findings do not just map out a means for a more inclusive approach to sharing disaster risk reduction information locally, but contain positive experiences of transformation and coping that could inform policy and disaster response at an international level. Thus we also want to create an exhibit for the UK, demonstrating our findings across Dominica, St. Vincent and Montserrat aimed at those responsible for shaping response and policy in the English-speaking SIDS in the Caribbean. To do this we are working with the Overseas Development Institute, creating new partnerships with the British Red Cross, and responding to advice from the Emergency Response Team from the Department for International Development. Collectively, we will work together to understand how to create effective engagement. Finally, we will draw both elements together using a website as a digital tool to bridge between the different communities, as a means to further enhance conversations between these groups and to document and continue the process of sharing and learning, including our own.

Impact Summary:
The results and activities of this project will benefit:
1. Communities and individuals who have experienced the impact of or at risk from natural hazards in the Caribbean. The project, both in terms of the outputs (exhibits and webpage) and the process of mainstreaming the importance of cultural responses in disaster risk reduction (DRR) will directly benefit communities at risk in the short and long term. 1) In a series of storytelling workshops people living in the island of Montserrat who come from a diverse set of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds will be invited to share their stories, music, poetry and other forms of cultural expressions around experiences of and impacts from natural hazards. 2) Feeding from the first activity and complementing it with historical and geological material, a mobile exhibit will be co-produced with local actors and displayed at different locations in the island. Both activities will provide a much needed space for participants to discuss, share and generate different types of knowledge which is held by the communities themselves and could be readily used in future responses to hazards. Through careful activity design (use of language and choice of location), marginalised groups of migrants who tend to be excluded from mainstream cultural and DRR activities will be targeted and brought into the process as bearers of important knowledge. This will provide opportunities for all participants to exchange experiences, build confidence, create social networks and engage in activities through new social and cultural spaces. 3) The website will strengthen this process by connecting the population of Montserrat with the diasporas and with different memories and expressions of their geo-cultural heritage in creative and innovative forms. Music, video and sound recordings will complement the stories and testimonies accessible through the website. 4) In the long term, we envisage that the exhibit targeting policy makers and donors of aid in the UK will influence the way in which they contribute to improving resilience and preparedness in the Caribbean and therefore benefiting the communities at risk in Montserrat and beyond, especially those located in the volcanic SIDS and English-speaking Caribbean.
2. Government agencies, academic and scientific institutions and donors of aid in international development who work in DRR in the Caribbean. Specifically, this project aims to support and enhance the work of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, the Montserrat National Trust, the Seismic Research Centre at the University of the West Indies and the Red Cross. Through the processes of organising story-telling workshops, co-designing the exhibit and its display in the island, these institutions will be able to test new methodologies and forms of engaging with communities at risk, including non-English speaking groups. The learning process resulting from these activities, which will be carefully documented and reflected upon through the 'productive interactions' approach, will be possible to take into future projects, benefiting these institutions in the short and long term. Other project outputs, including the UK exhibit and the website, which will represent the key legacies of the project, will directly benefit these organisations, as they will become tools to enhance their work and include a large range of materials and perspectives into improved preparedness plans for the future.
Overall, by bringing government agencies and policy makers (the Government of Montserrat, DFID and MVO), together with non-government organizations (The British Red Cross) and academic institutions (University of East Anglia, UK and University of West Indies) this project will provide a platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange and capacity strengthening for policy makers in the Caribbean and the UK.