Resilience or resistance? Negotiated mitigation of landslide risks in informal settlements in Medellin

城市化继续推动易受灾害影响的土地上的非正式定居点的增长，增加了特别是低收入人口的风险，并提高了提高这些社区抵御能力的必要性。在陡峭的山坡和沟壑上生长的非正式定居点特别容易发生滑坡，这是发展中国家的一个主要死亡原因。为了减少灾害，我们需要通过管理风险来预测这些灾害。管理滑坡风险的方法有很多，从建立物理保护屏障到提高意识，让社区做好准备。然而，在发展中国家，这些措施往往难以执行，这不仅是因为缺乏资源，而且还因为复杂的社会、经济、政治和体制原因。本项目旨在从社区和国家的角度探讨非正式住区减少滑坡风险战略的范围和可接受性；了解滑坡风险降低策略的障碍；在更广泛、更复杂的社会和自然风险背景下，确定政治上和实际可行的滑坡风险减少战略方法。我们将在哥伦比亚麦德林市探讨这些问题，麦德林市因其城市规划和设计而获得许多赞誉，并成为其他城市的“典范”。尽管这座城市取得了成功，但由于其地形，在有山体滑坡风险的土地上的非正式定居点增长仍然是一个主要问题。这座城市在滑坡风险管理方面的经验教训有可能很容易在发展中国家传播。在麦德林（Medellin），尽管人们意识到其近期历史上主要的悲剧性山体滑坡所带来的风险，以及市政当局根据地质研究重新安置部分非正式定居点的理由，但这些地区的居民抵制重新安置，并抗议当地政府有其他动机。该项目将在麦德林东北部开展工作，那里有高度集中的“风险”定居点，特别是在社区和公共机构之间分歧最明显的Comuna 8。通过焦点小组和半结构化访谈，我们将探讨社区内和相关公共部门机构对风险的看法和相关叙述，以及这种看法和叙述对采取风险缓解战略和行动的影响。这将有助于我们了解这些看法之间的差异，这些差异可能会阻碍就减轻风险措施达成一致。然后，我们将培训来自选定的“风险”社区的社区成员，以便在社区和个别家庭一级试点和测试简单的滑坡风险监测和缓解技术，参与者将与其他机构一起评估经验。然后，这些活动的结果将在研讨会上得到反映，这些研讨会汇集了社区、公共部门和第三部门，这些部门被指定为“战略干预区”（东北麦德林），以探索围绕减轻滑坡风险共同决策的可行方法。该项目将提供：(1)一个由社区管理的有效的试点滑坡风险缓解监测计划，该计划将作为一个模式，在评估的基础上进行改进后，在其他地方复制；(2)在（非正式）社区试点个体房屋风险缓解改善作为范例；(3)提高对风险感知的理解和认识，以及通过合作行动减轻非正式住区滑坡风险的技术和战略；(4)确定围绕技术、社会、文化和组织知识之间相互作用的关键问题，以便在进一步的滑坡风险缓解研究中加以解决。

Urbanisation continues to drive the growth of informal settlements on land exposed to hazards, increasing risk particularly among low-income populations, and heightening the need to improve the resilience of such communities. Informal settlements growing up steep hillsides and ravines are particularly exposed to landslides, which are a major cause of death in developing countries. In order to reduce disasters, we need to anticipate these through managing risk. Many ways of managing landslide risk are known, ranging from building physical protection barriers to raising awareness to prepare communities. However, in developing countries these measures are often difficult to implement, not only because of lack of resources but also due to complex social, economic, political and institutional reasons. This project aims to explore the scope for, and acceptability of, landslide risk-reducing strategies for informal settlements from the community and state perspectives; to understand the barriers to landslide risk-reducing strategies; and identify politically and practically viable approaches to landslide risk-reducing strategies within a wider and more complex context of social and physical risk.We will explore these issues in the city of Medellin, Colombia, which has received many accolades for its urban planning and design and has become a 'model' for cities elsewhere. Despite the city's successes, informal settlement growth on land at risk of landslides continues to be a major problem due to its topography. Lessons learnt about landslide risk management in this city have the potential to be easily disseminated across the developing world.In Medellin, despite the awareness of risk raised by key tragic landslides in its recent history and the arguments used by the City Administration to relocate parts of informal settlements based on geological studies, the residents of these areas resist relocation and protest that the local government has other motives. The project will work in NE Medellin, where there is a high concentration of 'at risk' settlements, and in particular in Comuna 8, where disagreements between community and public agencies are most pronounced.Using focus groups and semi-structured interviews in Comuna 8, we will explore the perceptions of risk and related narratives within the community and among relevant public sector agencies, and the implications of such perceptions and narratives for the adoption of risk-mitigating strategies and actions. This will help us understand the differences between these perceptions which may hinder agreement over risk-mitigation measures. We will then train community members from selected 'at risk' neighbourhoods in order to pilot and test simple landslide risk monitoring and mitigation techniques at the community and individual household level, and the participants will evaluate the experience together with other agencies. The findings from these activities will then be reflected on by workshops bringing together community, public sector and third sector across what has been designated as a 'Strategic Intervention Area' (NE Medellin) in order to explore viable ways of achieving joint decision-making around landslide risk mitigation. The project will provide: (1) a functioning pilot community-managed landslide risk mitigation monitoring scheme, which will serve as a model to be replicated elsewhere after improvements based on the evaluation; (2) pilot individual house risk-mitigating improvements as exemplars in the (informal) community; (3) raised understanding and awareness of perceptions of risk and techniques and strategies that can mitigate landslide risk in informal settlements through collaborative action; (4) and identification of key questions around the interaction between technical, social, cultural and organisational knowledges to address in further research on landslide risk mitigation.