After examining the Shenmu village case, we have highlighted two key findings for periodic disaster recovery. First, victims’ home identities are strongly associated not only with culture but also with their means of survival. A successful relocation proposal must consider solutions that accommodate victims’ daily needs and
Figure 8: On any days with heavy rain, landslides and mudslides of the Shenmu village might destroy roads and bridges. Villagers, therefore, have developed their own ‘do-it-ourselves’ rescue plan.
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their permanent connection with their destroyed home. It may take generations to transfer their identity from their old home to a new one. Second, survivors of continual disasters often develop strong and flexible community resilience processes for handling emergencies. Professional rescue plans and rebuilding projects may help them in the long run, but they have to survive the first critical period of three to five days using their own grassroots efforts. According to residents’ experiences, professionals often propose inappropriate strategies for infrastructure reconstruction (that is, roads and bridges) that cause new problems during subsequent mudslides or landslides.
In conclusion, we have discovered that design and planning professionals play a minor role in rectifying the problems caused by Shenmu village’s periodic disasters. The people in the community have creatively established methods for surviving the first critical stage of an event. Their deep bond with this remote village has profoundly influenced their perception of the safety of their lives by remaining at the mudslide-prone Shenmu village. In this era of climate change, it is likely that periodic disasters will be more frequent in many cities and countries. For this reason, it is critical to analyse the lessons from the Shenmu village case. Rootedness and community resilience have enabled the Hakka residents to maintain their sense of home in Shenmu village, even though mudslides and landslides have become a regular part of their environment.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express special thanks to Dr Cheng-Chien Liu at the National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City, Taiwan, and Dr Su-Chin Chen, Dr Chun- Hung Wu and Mr Shao-Chien Chen at the National Chung Hsing University, Taichung City, Taiwan. Without their agreement, we would not have been able to include figures 1, 5 and 6 in our paper. We also particularly thank Dr Wu who carefully modified figures 1 and 5 for our use in this paper.
NOTES
1 According to Taiwanese hazard law, governments are responsible for the repair of
damaged infrastructure. Local residents, as long as they have household registration in the area, can report to a local government office and request a repair project.
Therefore, local residents of Shenmu village do not dare to relocate and change
their household registration status. They worry that, if they lost their household registration status, they would not be eligible for any post-disaster repair projects,
and then would not be able to transport their agricultural products from Shenmu
village to outside markets.
2 According to Kao (2011), Shenmu villagers learnt where the safe locations for farming were from their landslide experiences. They decided to separate their vegetable farms
to different locations to avoid the risk of losing many farms close together in the same
mudslide. However, according to our field notes, farmers have contracted land from the National Taiwan University and the 40-year rental contracts are not sufficiently flexible for change. Farmers could only farm within land under the National Taiwan University agreement. We doubt they had the flexibility mentioned in Kao’s research. 3 However, the Morakot disaster recovery project in the Shenmu Village of Xinyi
township and other projects in the Renai township of the Natou County involved scandals for Mr Lee Chao-chin, the Nantou magistrate. Mr Lee was accused of bribery in relation to the Morakot recovery road repair project on 30 November 2012. Lee and seven county officers were brought in for questioning. More importantly, Mr Hung Chia-yuan, acting chief prosecutor of Nantou District Prosecutors Office,
stated that ‘the alleged kickback involved in the case amounts to approximately NT$10 million’. (Adam Tyrsett Kuo, The China Post, 30 November 2012, www. chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2012/11/30/362626/Nantou- magistrate.htm)
4 According to Taiwanese laws, only registered residents can report infrastructure
failures and receive compensation when major disasters occur.
5 Villagers are also afraid that the National Taiwan University will eventually cancel the land rental contracts. They vacillate between relocating and staying. If they relocate to the new houses, their commute time for farming would be four hours per day.
However, if they do not relocate, they stand to lose everything when the National
Taiwan University terminates the land rental contracts.
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Joern Langhorst is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Colorado Denver, Campus Box 126, PO Box 173364, Denver, CO, 80202, United States of America.
Telephone: (+1) 303–956–3559 Fax: (+1) 303–556–3687 Email: [email protected] KEY WORDS Post-disaster landscapes Landscape recovery Environmental justice Community participation Design–build