Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Children commonly make up over half of the population of any community, yet their voices are seldom heard or their views taken into account in pre- and post-disaster situations. Listening to children’s understandings and emotions about natural disasters can contribute to disaster risk reduction by harnessing their capabilities in building community resilience. This paper addresses the predominating themes across conversations on resilience, adaptive capacity, and agency as well as vulnerability with children aged nine to eleven years in Canoa, Ecuador where there was a major earthquake in April 2016. Adaptation as the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change or natural disaster and its effects focus on deliberate action, including interventions and processes initiated purposefully by a range of actors with a goal of bringing about major change or transformation. The capacity of adaptation or bouncing back (“elasticidad” is a Spanish translation for resilience) can be reduced by the underlying vulnerability of poverty and inequality, location and hazard type as well as the ways in which decisions and options are closed, opened, and shaped by actors and relations of power. The susceptibility of Ecuador to disaster is revealed through statistical records covering the period 2014 to 2016 which show that the total cost of damages brought about by various types of disasters was $2,010,000,000 which represents 2,1% of the GDP of 2016. However, government spending for 2016 to 2018 is estimated at $3,636,000,000 of which $2,410,000,000 has been spent. Specifically, we examine documents and interviews with national and local stakeholders and policymakers about how children are envisaged in Ecuador’s disaster risk reduction policies, in risk education programs, and as active participants in a country that may be vacillating between following international guidelines and traditional top-down approaches which may not yet enable a participatory role for children. We conclude with the voices of children. Their school is located beside the Pacific Ocean. A bridge that facilitated quick access to higher ground in the event of a tsunami was destroyed in the 2016 earthquake. The children are working on the design of a new bridge.