Interaction and Collaboration as a Source of Community Recovery and Empowerment: Insights from Minamata and K izawa (Chuetsu) for Post-disaster Sustainable Community Development
The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on 11 March 2011 and shock ed both Japan and the world with its scale and seriousness of the adverse i mpacts on human communities and living environment. It has never been an ea sy task to overcome such an adversity and find a way to restore and revital ize communities in the post-disaster period. The government assistance is n ecessary to rebuild basic infrastructure and social services for any commun ity. A critical challenge remains if a community building could be sustaina ble in the long-run perspective. Therefore\, it can be useful if we look cl osely at cases moving into the direction. In this seminar\, we will examine the question by focusing on two particular cases: Minamata-city\, Kumamoto \, and Kizawa-community in Chuetsu\, Niigata. Minamata-city\, severely dama ged by organic mercury pollution for more than a half-century\, has become a leading environmental model city with local-grown vision\, policy\, and m ethod. Kizawa-community\, a small village hard hit by the 2004 Chuetsu Eart hquake in Niigata prefecture in Japan\, has gradually identified local asse ts through interaction with outsiders in the process of community reconstru ction. By sharing these two in its hardships\, measures overcoming the prob lems and community changes\, we would like to discuss keys to reconstruct a community in a sustainable form in the post-disaster phase.
Bio:
Takayoshi Kusago is a professor\, Faculty of Sociology\ , Kansai University\, and a visiting professor\, IRES\, UBC for 2015-2016. He holds a Ph.D. in international development from the University of Wiscon sin-Madison. From the perspective of human development and capability appro ach\, he has studied a variety of subjects pertinent to modernization and s ustainable community development. He has published research papers in acade mic journals including World Development\, Social Indicators Research\, and coauthored GNH (Gross National Happiness) in 2011.
LOCATION:Room 120\, C.K. Choi Building GEO:49.267258;-123.257967 URL;VALUE=URI:https://sppga.ubc.ca/events/event/interaction-and-collaborati on-as-a-source-of-community-recovery-and-empowerment-insights-from-minamata -and-kizawa-chuetsu-for-post-disaster-sustainable-community-development/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20151101T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR