How can disaster agencies and community work together?

The way that disaster management agencies and community-led grassroots groups work together during and after a crisis has captured local, national and even global attention as the number of floods, fires and other climate disasters increase in frequency and magnitude. With that in mind, UCRH held a Research Seminar drawing on data from UCRH research looking at connections between grassroots groups and disaster management agencies. This work built on earlier exploration of the critical role of community-led grassroots organising during and after climate-related disasters in three impacted sites in NSW, one of which was the Northern Rivers. The Seminar was held at UCRH on Thursday, 20 March and it was given by Dr Jo Longman and Emma Pittaway. Dr Longman is a Senior Research Fellow at UCRH and co-led the Centre’s Community Recovery After Flood studies following catastrophic flooding in the Northern Rivers in 2017. More recently she has been the chief investigator for the Northern Rivers arm of projects exploring self-organising following disaster and for a project exploring disaster management agencies’ connections to community. Emma Pittaway also became involved in community-led disaster recovery and resilience research at UCRH after the 2022 Northern Rivers floods and landslides. She has a background in community development, refugee advocacy and climate activism. Based on their work, Dr Longman and Ms Pittaway presented on barriers to agency-community collaboration as well as positive examples of lessons learned and changes implemented since 2022, showing the potential for meaningful collaboration when agencies invest in relationship-building, respect community knowledge, and adopt flexible approaches. They argued for a cultural shift within disaster management agencies to enhance recognition, relationships of trust, and collaboration.