Patterns of vulnerability and resilience to floods in Santa Fe, Argentina: an assessment of the viability of resettlement as a risk mitigation strategy
 
This project was carried out by the World Habitat Research Centre (WHRC) in partnership with the “Centro de Estudios Organizacionales” of the University of Buenos Aires and the Department of Geography of the “Universidad Nacional del Litoral” (UNL) in Santa Fe. The first phase focused on theoretical and methodological issues. After a four-days seminar held at the University of Buenos Aires in March 2008 on “Assessing vulnerability and resilience to natural disasters: concepts and methods” the participants conducted one week qualitative field research in Santa Fe, a city 400 kilometers in the Northwest of Buenos Aires that is regularly affected by severe floods. The research revealed that many of Santa Fe’s marginalized neighborhoods are highly vulnerable to floods. Its inhabitants, however, often prefer to live with this risk than to relocate to safer sites. Resettlement, however, has been pursued by NGOs after the floods of 2003, and is

mage 1: Neighborhood located in flood-prone area. The community also faces severe poverty, insecurity, violence, crimes linked with drugs, unemployment and lack of perspectives for young people.	Image 2: In spite of these precarious housing conditions and the risk of floods, many people prefer to stay in this neighborhood due to its proximity to livelihood opportunities such as waste picking and recycling.

increasingly considered as a viable strategy towards risk mitigation also by Santa Fe’s municipal authorities. Considering the policy relevance and the interest manifested by various stakeholders in better understanding the opportunities and challenges of resettlement as a strategy to mitigate the risk of natural hazards, the second phase of the project focused both theoretically and empirically on this subject. The activities started with a five-days seminar on “Is resettlement a viable strategy to mitigate the risk of natural hazards?” that was held at the UNL in Santa Fe in November 2009. The

Image 3: A 25m2 plastic house offered by the German Red Cross to resettle people after the devastating floods of 2003.	Image 4: Conducting household surveys in a resettled neighborhood.

seminar involved students and researchers from different parts of Argentina and Switzerland. A public event consisting of a roundtable discussion with different stakeholders including government officials, senior experts, and representatives of civil society organizations, neighborhood associations and community representatives was organized to enhance a dialogue between different stakeholders. The seminar was followed by three weeks of field research focusing on communities’ attitudes towards relocation in both flood-prone as well as relocated neighborhoods. A group of eight graduate students of the University of Santa Fe participated in conducting semi-structured interviews, focus groups and household surveys aiming at a better understanding of the socio-economic and demographic factors affecting the social acceptance of resettlement as a risk mitigation strategies. The research findings will be jointly published by the World Habitat Research Centre and by the Universidad Nacional del Litoral of Santa Fe and will be available online.

For further details please contact:
In Switzerland:
Dr. Jennifer Duyne Barenstein and Lic. Phil. Brigitte Marti Rojas Rivas
World Habitat Resaerch Centre
www.worldhabitat.supsi.ch
University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland
emails: jennifer.duyne@supsi.ch; brigitte.marti@supsi.ch

In Argentina:
Prof. María Luisa D’Angelo
Department of Geography of  the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences
Universidad  Nacional del Litoral Santa Fe, Argentina
http://www.unl.edu.ar/
emails: mdangelo@fhuc.unl.edu.ar

Image 5: Many people prefer to adapt their houses to the risk of floods - for example by building a second floor to their houses - than to resettle.