Prelims

Half Title Page

The Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus

Title Page

Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management Volume 19

The Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus

Edited by

Andreas Neef

The University of Auckland, New Zealand

and

Jesse Hession Grayman

The University of Auckland, New Zealand

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2019

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78743-100-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-099-0 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-278-9 (Epub)

ISSN: 2040-7262 (Series)

Contents

About the Editors

Andreas Neef is a Professor in Development Studies at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. His current research focuses on the ethics and politics of land grabbing, development-induced displacement, adaptation and resilience to climate change and post-disaster response and recovery in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. He has conducted research into the controversial role of tourism in disaster recovery processes in Thailand, Fiji and Vanuatu. Andreas Neef served two times as Scientific Advisor to the German Parliament, on issues of global food security and on international societal and political discourses around the commodification of biodiversity and ecosystem services. He has published widely on transnational land acquisitions, contestation of customary property rights and polycentric resource governance in Mainland Southeast Asia. Recent publications include ‘Climate adaptation strategies in Fiji: The role of social norms and cultural values’ (2018, World Development) and ‘Land Rights Matter! Anchors to Reduce Land Grabbing, Dispossession and Displacement’ (2016, Policy Study for the German NGO Bread for the World).

Jesse Hession Grayman is a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at The University of Auckland. His research in Aceh, Indonesia, examines longer-term post-conflict and post-tsunami humanitarian recovery processes, particularly through international organisations and local NGOs. Jesse’s other research looks at Southeast Asian communities’ resilience to nature’s hazards in Auckland, New Zealand and community-driven development policies in Indonesia’s health sector. Recent publications include ‘Topography and scale in a community-driven maternal and child health program in Eastern Indonesia’ (2017, Medicine Anthropology Theory) and ‘Official and unrecognised narratives of recovery in post conflict Aceh, Indonesia’ (2016, Critical Asian Studies).

About the Authors

Kayt Bronnimann is a Master’s student in Development Studies at The University of Auckland. Her research looks at the gender equality measures in the 2016 Community Government Act in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea and how this has affected political, social and family life for the women elected.

Alejandro Acosta Carrizosa holds an MA in Development Studies from The University of Auckland. He is currently working as Project Manager and Developer in a community-based tourism development project on the Northern Pacific coast of Colombia.

Monsinee Attavanich is a Lecturer of the Faculty of Architecture, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand. Her research interests are in vernacular architecture, the impact of modernisation on architecture, and living conditions in post-disaster housing, particularly among indigenous sea-faring people with insecure land rights in southern Thailand.

Lucy Benge holds a Master of Arts in Development Studies from The University of Auckland. Her research interests include linking development to disaster recovery, climate-induced displacement and adaptation to climate change. She currently works at Auckland Emergency Management.

Olivier Evrard is a Senior Researcher at the French Institute for Research for Sustainable Development. Olivier’s work in social anthropology has examined agrarian transitions, the history of interethnic relationships, tourism mobilities and labour migration in Laos and Thailand.

Wardlow Friesen is an Associate Professor of Geography at The University of Auckland. His specialist interests include development, migration and tourism, with regional interests in New Zealand, the Pacific islands, especially Melanesia, and South and Southeast Asia.

Jesse Hession Grayman is a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at The University of Auckland. His research in Aceh, Indonesia, examines post-conflict and post-tsunami humanitarian recovery, particularly through international organisations and local NGOs. Jesse currently studies Indonesia’s community-driven development policies in the health sector.

Maitree Jongkraichak is the Chairman of a community bank in Ban Nam Khem, a Thai village severely affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. He has coordinated a network in four provinces dedicated to solving post-disaster land conflicts. He also has experience in disaster recovery in Myanmar (Burma), Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Preeda Kongpan serves as the Manager of Chumchonthai Foundation (Thailand). Her work is dedicated to defending the rights of Thailand’s indigenous peoples, including formerly sea-faring people (chao leh) along southern Thailand’s Andaman Coast. She has served in various committees relating to disaster recovery with particular focus on secure livelihoods.

Mary Mostafanezhad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Her current work examines cross-border environmental politics, tourism development and agrarian transitions in southeast Asia.

Andreas Neef is a Professor in Development Studies at The University of Auckland. His current research focuses on transnational land grabbing, development-induced displacement, adaptation to climate change and the role of tourism in post-disaster response and recovery with a regional focus on Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

Grant Shirley completed a Master of Arts in Development Studies with Honours from The University of Auckland. His research interests include post-conflict/disaster development, the strategic dimension of aid in the Pacific Islands and intra-Pacific trade networks.

Marjorie van Strien holds a MSc in Leisure, Tourism and Environment and currently pursues a PhD in Natural Resources and Society. She has extensive experience working on sustainable tourism and livelihoods in South and Southeast Asia. She worked in Nepal for over six years where she experienced the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake.

Emma Wylie was recently awarded first-class honours in the Bachelor of Health Sciences from The University of Auckland with a dissertation on the New Zealand Aid Programme. She conducted health research with ‘waste picker women’ living in the slums of Mumbai, through the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Scholarship to Asia.

Preface

The aim of this volume is to shed light on the complex linkages between tourism, disaster and conflict. In many countries, tourism crises have been precipitated by natural disasters, as exemplified by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that devastated coastal tourist destinations in several South and southeast Asian countries and the Category 5 tropical cyclones Pam and Winston that ravaged small island countries in the South Pacific in 2015 and 2016. At the same time, the tourism industry has often been assigned a pivotal role in the reconstruction and recovery efforts. Prospective tourists have been lured into supporting post-disaster rehabilitation simply through visiting disaster-affected areas. Yet, prioritising the tourism sector in the recovery process may have unintended consequences: less touristic areas that have been severely affected by the disaster may receive less humanitarian relief support. Disaster recovery processes in the tourism industry can also be highly uneven, as multinational hotel chains tend to recover much more swiftly and increase both their market share and their control over important resources. Politically well-connected tourist operators, wealthy local elites and external investors tend to exploit distorted recovery governance mechanisms and take advantage of the legal and institutional uncertainties triggered by disasters to pursue their own economic interests. Insecure, customary land rights of ethnic minority groups and indigenous people may be particularly prone to exploitation by opportunistic tourist operators in the aftermath of a disaster.

Another dimension of the tourism–conflict–disaster nexus exists when disasters occur in war-torn countries and post-conflict states or regions. Disasters may exacerbate pre-existing conflict situations by increasing competition over scarce natural resources and relief funds, or they may catalyse conflict resolution following an intolerable excess of additional suffering among fighting parties. Tourism ventures may offer post-conflict livelihood opportunities, but potentially trigger new conflicts if former combatants take their spoils of peace before ordinary survivors of war and other disasters have their chance to participate in new tourism economies. In both formal and informal economic sectors, disasters may instigate a morbid ‘dark tourism’ industry that invites visitors to enter spaces of death and suffering at memorials, graves, museums and sites of atrocity.

These are some of the issues that the chapters will address in this volume’s exploration of the tourism–conflict–disaster nexus. The ideas for this volume were born out of an 18-month research project led by the first editor and funded by The University of Auckland’s Faculty of Arts Early Staff Research Development Fund. We also organised a special session at the Biennial Aotearoa – New Zealand Development Studies Conference in Wellington, New Zealand, on ‘The Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus’ which helped to shape our conceptual ideas about this new field of studies. Several chapters emerged from preliminary findings presented in the conference session. We express our gratitude to the conference organisers, John Overton and Lorena de la Torre, for allowing us to convene the session and to all session participants for the constructive discussions.

A summer scholar, Emma Wylie, helped us in gathering the extensive social science literature for the introductory chapter in which we present the conceptual underpinnings of the tourism–disaster nexus. Emma also contributed to the writing of one of the chapters. A second summer scholar, Kayt Bronnimann, contributed to the writing of another chapter. These summer scholarships were funded by The University of Auckland.

We are particularly indebted to the scholars who made invaluable contributions to this volume by reviewing the various chapters, namely David Sanders, Wiendu Nuryanti, Stroma Cole, Wardlow Friesen, Mary Mostafanezhad, William Lee Waugh, Jr and Annaclaudia Martini.

We hope that this volume will stimulate further research and debate among human geographers, anthropologists and other critical social scientists in this emerging field of critical tourism studies. Some of the chapters may also inform policy making for improved humanitarian interventions in post-disaster and post-conflict tourism areas.

Andreas Neef

Jesse Hession Grayman

Editors