Lessons from the Tsunami recovery in Sri Lanka and India

Community, livelihoods, tourism and housing

• Judith Shaw, and others
• Monash Asia Institute

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27 August 2010Between 2006 and 2010, a large and wide-ranging study of post-tsunami recovery and rehabilitation in Sri Lanka and India was completed by a team of researchers from Monash and RMIT Universities in Melbourne. Given the scale of the 2004 tsunami disaster and the extent of the damage spread across four separate countries and a huge
number of towns, cities and villages, and given the unprecedented amounts of aid funding that flowed into affected areas, it is obviously critical that the world should learn as much as possible about the strengths and weaknesses of relief and rehabilitation efforts. Major post-tsunami studies have concluded that the immediate relief effort was
largely effective but that the longer term social recovery work has been less impressive. Furthermore, the post-tsunami rehabilitation work involved the most extensive relocation and resettlement of dislocated people yet undertaken and so it is critical to learn important lessons from this resettlement process. This study focused on major challenges for social recovery—i.e. rebuilding local communities and household livelihoods—and it also examined the design and delivery of housing in resettlement programs. In Sri Lanka, as in Thailand, the tsunami hit coastal areas that have been popular destinations for international tourists and the Sri Lankan government put a high priority on rebuilding the shattered tourism industry. So this study also examines the challenges involved in establishing sustainable coastal tourism in Sri Lanka, in particular.

Authors: Judith Shaw, Martin Mulligan, Yaso Nadarajah, Dave Mercer and Iftekhar Ahmed