Very interesting comments – thank you all – and I certainly won’t rehash the same territory with my experiences of Kenya given Michael B has commented on it quite aptly. Also concur with you Catherine with your comment on how intertwined community development and humanitarian aid are. Given these 5 of 6 key components of the DRR diagram are factors we often take for granted in a developed nation, and limitations in these are often why we label other nations as ‘developing’, it follows that a country or region with, say, inadequate food security will very easily have its coping resources expended and overwhelmed when an additional challenge or burden emerges. These factors appear are intimately tied to a given nation or region’s resilience; and furthermore with each other, particularly around that notion of social capital. When one or more of these factors (as approached from a ‘community development’ perspective – or the DRR stage) is overwhelmed, social capital is exhausted, and the affected region can no longer adequately respond to mitigate the additional stressor – hence a disaster requiring humanitarian assistance.
