Risk, Disasters and Need-based Transfers Workshop Hosted by the Human Generosity Project and the Decision Center for a Desert City, Arizona State University

Reciprocity, Altruism, and Need-Based Transfers as Potential Resilience

Conferring Social Mechanisms in Violent System Perturbation

Photo by David Kozlowski

Keith G. Tidball, Ph.D.Department of Natural ResourcesCornell University15 JAN 2016.

DisasterWar

Faces of Violent System Perturbation

Violent System Perturbations = Red Zones

LOCATION RED ZONE TYPEAfghanistan Ongoing wars in the Middle EastBerlin, Germany Post-Cold War divisionsCharleston, South Carolina 1989 Hurricane HugoCameroon and Chad Mid 2000’s civil unrest in Central AfricaCyprus Demarcation between Greek and Turkish CyprusEurope 1940’s WW II Nazi internment campsGuatemala Ongoing post-conflict insecurityIraq Ongoing wars in the Middle EastJohannesburg, South Africa Early 2000’s Soweto, Post-Apartheid violenceKenya Early 2000’s Resource scarcity conflictLiberia 1989- 2003 civil warMadagascar Costal vulnerabilityNew Orleans, USA 2005 Hurricane KatrinaNew York City, USA 2001 September 11th terrorist attacksRotterdam, Netherlands Ongoing urban insecurityPort-au-Prince, Haiti 2010 earthquakeRussia Post-Soviet Cold War urban insecuritySarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1996 conflictSouth Korea Demilitarized Zone South Korea 2002 Typhoon and coastal vulnerabilityStockholm, Sweden Urban insecurity in times of warTokyo and Hiroshima, Japan WW II bombingsUnited States WW II involvement United States Violence and prison populations

Resilience

Resilience is…• Explanations for the source and role of

change in adaptive systems, particularly the kinds of change that are transforming.

• Focused on social-ecological systems – not simply linked or coupled systems of people and nature, people IN nature

• Found at multiple scales, from the scale of a farm or village, through communities, regions, and nations to the globe.

Resilience - the ability to absorb disturbances, to be changed and then to re-organize and still have the same identity. It includes the ability to learn from the disturbance. Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig. 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5

Reciprocity• Becchetti, Leonardo and

Castriota, Stefano and Conzo, Pierluigi. 2012. Calamity, Aid and Indirect Reciprocity: The Long Run Impact of Tsunami on Altruism. CEIS Working Paper No. 239. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2101673 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2101673

• Faas, Albert J. 2012. Reciprocity and Development in Disaster-Induced Resettlement in Andean Ecuador. Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4317

• Fleming, D. A., A. Chong and H. D. Bejarano. 2014. Trust and Reciprocity in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters. The Journal of Development Studies 50(11): 1482-1493. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220388.2014.936395

Altruism• American Sociological

Association. "In Disasters, Panic Is Rare; Altruism Dominates." ScienceDaily, 8 August 2002. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020808075321.htm

• Lemieux, F. 2014. "The impact of a natural disaster on altruistic behavior and crime." Disasters 38(3): 483-499. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/disa.12057/abstract

• Russell R. Dynes. 1994. Situational Altruism: Toward an Explanation of Pathologies in Disaster Assistance. University of Delaware, Disaster Research Center, Preliminary Paper #201 . Presented in Research Committee #39--Sociology of Disasters, XIII World Congress of Sociology, Bielefeld, Germany, 18-23, July. http://udspace.udel.edu/bitstream/handle/19716/586/PP201.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Need-Based Transfers

?

Three Cousins/ Constructs… Disaster Context

Need-based Transfers

“Need-based transfers are a widespread form of human cooperation across cultures that enhance survival in marginal environments… the only … risk management strategy that necessarily involves cooperation.” Need-based transfers “entail a commitment to helping a risk pooling partner when that partner is in need and one is able to help…the donor’s response to the recipient’s need is the defining feature.”

Hao, Y., D. Armbruster, L. Cronk and C. A. Aktipis (2015). "Need-based transfers on a network: a model of risk-pooling in ecologically volatile environments." Evolution and Human Behavior 36(4): 265-273.

“…there will be social mechanisms behind management practices based on local ecological knowledge, as evidence of a co-evolutionary relationship between local institutions and the ecosystem in which they are located.” Berkes & Folke 1998

“…systems that demonstrate resilience appear to have learned to recognize feedback, and therefore possess mechanisms by which information from the environment can be received, processed, and interpreted.” Berkes & Folke 1998

Does cooperation such as NBTs act as a social mechanism, that brings about the conditions needed for adaptation in the face of disturbance (eg. disaster and war), fundamental to social-ecological system resilience?

Provocation 1:How do we detect NBTs in Disaster Contexts?

• Need a language – “looking in the rear-view mirror” - explore examples in GRZ book – use lexical/content analysis?• Perform exhaustive lit review in scientific literatures across the three

concepts

• Need a baseline- retroactive/retroductive study of Superstorm Sandy to develop descriptors of NBTs and catalog them – a set of characteristics

• Develop a “rapid reaction” study protocol , based on the above, that is ready to launch at the next disaster• Utilize rapid assessment methods, etc. to gather real-time data

Does Philanthropy Count?Key findings from Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy 2013 include the following:

• Looking across seven data sources, they documented $27.6 billion for disasters and humanitarian crises. This figure is not comprehensive, but it provides a starting point for understanding the scale of global disaster-related philanthropy.

• Grants awarded by the top 1,000 U.S. foundations totaled $116.9 million. In addition, a review of Foundation Center’s broader database identified an additional $60.1 million in funding by smaller foundations, public charities, and international foundations.

• Storms drew the most investments from U.S. foundations (46 percent of all funding) and the largest proportion of giving was for response and relief (42 percent), while 19 percent of funding targeted reconstruction and recovery efforts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-lawrence/occupy-sandy_b_2155103.html

Charity means: "I'm fine, so I'll give you something."

Mutual aid means: "We're all in this together, so let's help each other out."

What does it mean that the Occupy Sandy Movement was catalytic in nurturing mutual aid and gave rise to many NBTs?

Investigate NBTs (analogs for Mutual Aid) in the post-Superstorm Sandy context to dig deeper …

Provocation 2:How are NBTs affected by the presence of Philanthropy and Charity in Disaster?

In post-Sandy NYC/NJ, greening efforts (an index for cooperation?) were stymied by bureaucratic forces that frustrated grass roots efforts to cooperate with restoration of public goods such as park spaces, public coastal areas, etc.

Some contend that the influence of large philanthropic interests contributed to “turf issues,” especially in the realms of restoration of public green/blue spaces…

DisasterWar

Faces of Violent System Perturbation

Provocation 3: What can we learn about NBTs from better understanding camaraderie among elite soldiers in war?

“Need-based transfers are a widespread form of human cooperation across cultures that enhance survival in marginal environments… the only … risk management strategy that necessarily involves cooperation.”

For those who have travelled far, to fight in foreign lands, know that the soldier's greatest comfort is to have his friends close at hand.

In the heat of battle it ceases to be an idea for which we fight. Or a flag. Rather we fight for the man on our left, and we fight for the man on our right.

And when armies are scattered and the empires fall away, all that remains is the memory of those precious moments that we spent side by side. The Four Feathers - A.E.W. Mason

• Risk-pooling among elite soldiers?– What can we learn from ancient efforts among Roman Legionnaires

to make sure fellow soldiers and their families were taken care of ?– What can we learn from modern-day analogs such as the Green

Beret Foundation?

• Risk-pooling among enemy combatants in WWI? Ashworth, Tony 1980 Trench Warfare, 1914–1918: The Live and Let Live System. New York: Holmes and Meier.

• How might these examples from warfare help with developing a new vocabulary to describe instances of sharing and generosity that are inspired simply by the needs of others and a sense of spiritual kinship, rather than the logic of debt or exchange?

Thank You!

kgtidball@cornell.edu