Livelihood and vulnerability in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda: lessons of community and resilience

Abstract

Livelihood strategies that are crafted in ‘extra-ordinary’ post-disaster conditions should also be able to function once some semblance of normalcy has resumed. This article aims to show that the vulnerability experienced in relation to Typhoon Yolanda was, and continues to be, directly linked to inadequate livelihood assets and opportunities. We examine the extent to which various livelihood strategies lessened vulnerability post-Typhoon Yolanda and argue that creating conditions under which disaster survivors have the freedom to pursue sustainable livelihood is essential in order to foster resilience and reduce vulnerability against future disasters. We offer suggestions to improve future relief efforts, including suggestions made by the survivors themselves. We caution against rehabilitation strategies that knowingly or unknowingly, resurrect pre-disaster vulnerability. Strategies that foster dependency, fail to appreciate local political or ecological conditions or undermine cooperation and cohesion in already vulnerable communities will be bound to fail. Some of the livelihood strategies that we observed post-Typhoon Yolanda failed on some or all of these points. It is important for future policy that these failings are addressed.

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Natural Hazards (2020) 103:211–230
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-03984-z
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Livelihood andvulnerability inthewake ofTyphoon Yolanda:
lessons ofcommunity andresilience
PaulineEadie2 · MariaElaAtienza1· MayTan‑Mullins3
Received: 14 July 2018 / Accepted: 24 April 2020 / Published online: 13 May 2020
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Livelihood strategies that are crafted in ‘extra-ordinary’ post-disaster conditions should
also be able to function once some semblance of normalcy has resumed. This article aims
to show that the vulnerability experienced in relation to Typhoon Yolanda was, and contin-
ues to be, directly linked to inadequate livelihood assets and opportunities. We examine the
extent to which various livelihood strategies lessened vulnerability post-Typhoon Yolanda
and argue that creating conditions under which disaster survivors have the freedom to pur-
sue sustainable livelihood is essential in order to foster resilience and reduce vulnerabil-
ity against future disasters. We offer suggestions to improve future relief efforts, including
suggestions made by the survivors themselves. We caution against rehabilitation strategies
that knowingly or unknowingly, resurrect pre-disaster vulnerability. Strategies that foster
dependency, fail to appreciate local political or ecological conditions or undermine coop-
eration and cohesion in already vulnerable communities will be bound to fail. Some of the
livelihood strategies that we observed post-Typhoon Yolanda failed on some or all of these
points. It is important for future policy that these failings are addressed.
Keywords Livelihood· Disaster resilience· Philippines· Vulnerability· Typhoon Haiyan
(Yolanda)
* Pauline Eadie
Pauline.Eadie@nottingham.ac.uk
Maria Ela Atienza
ela_atienza@yahoo.com
http://polisci.upd.edu.ph/faculty/atienza.html
May Tan-Mullins
May.TAN-MULLINS@nottingham.edu.cn
1 Department ofPolitical Science, University ofthePhilippines, 2nd Floor, Bulwagang Silangang
Palma/CSSP Faculty Centre, Roxas Ave. cor. Africa St., Diliman, 1101QuezonCity, Philippines
2 Institute ofAsia Pacific Studies, School ofPolitics andInternational Relations,
University ofNottingham, University Park, Room C8 Law and Social Sciences Building,
NottinghamNG72RD, UK
3 School ofInternational Studies, The University ofNottingham Ningbo China, 199 Taikang East
Road, AB313, Ningbo315100, China
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1 Introduction
Livelihood can be threatened by a complex array of issues such as disasters and wars,
which could deprive households of productive assets and access to markets, and potentially
disrupt livelihood related mutual support mechanisms that often exist in poor communities.
In this article, we argue that strategies to restore livelihood after a disaster must be devised
so that they can function effectively under ‘ordinary’, as opposed to ‘extraordinary’ condi-
tions (or times). Ordinary and extraordinary are not polar opposites; they are points on a
shifting and complex matrix of socio-economic life and the impact of disasters. Ordinary
conditions may include, but are not limited to, exposure to various anticipated risks such as
seasonal storms and flooding, inadequate shelter, discrimination on the basis of ethnicity,
age or gender, limited livelihood related capability or governmental inadequacy. These are
at times structural and consistent conditions that could happen on a regular basis. Disasters
such as super typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan) are considered to be extraor-
dinary. They are extreme in terms of their sheer scale and severity, are unusually disruptive
and result in unanticipated impacts.
In the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda thousands of aid workers arrived in the disaster
zone and millions of dollars in foreign aid poured into the local economy in support of
the humanitarian relief and rehabilitation effort. Many agencies stayed for up to 2 years,
some for longer, creating new opportunities for business, investment and local employment
but demand also increased for local goods and service, inflating prices and creating jobs
(Secret Aid Worker 2015). However, when aid agencies move on, and the post-disaster
economic bubble1 has run its course, a return to socio-economic ‘normalcy’ may be sub-
optimal, impossible or hard to quantify. Nevertheless, livelihood strategies created in the
aftermath of a disaster should still be viable in ‘ordinary’ circumstances. For livelihood
initiatives to be truly sustainable, they should be capable of reducing vulnerability over the
longer term and making the ‘ordinary’ better.
Human vulnerability is a multi-dimensional and dynamic condition. Age, gender, dis-
ability, sexuality, ethnic difference, locality and levels of wealth can all influence how vul-
nerable people are to specific threats and how these threats are perceived and experienced.
Poor individuals or communities may not, on the face of it, appear insecure as they are
functioning and their vulnerability may be latent. However, natural hazards can expose this
latent vulnerability that poor communities live with on a daily basis. When this exposure
is sudden, as in the case of major typhoons or earthquakes, the impact of the event dictates
that the event itself and the subsequent relief effort is presented in ‘extraordinary’ terms.
This was the case when Typhoon Yolanda struck the Eastern Visayas region of the Phil-
ippines on 8 November 2013. It was one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall
with wind speeds up to 315 kms per hour and a strong surge that reached six metres in
places. More than 6000 people died, 1785 were reported missing and 28,626 were injured
(National Operational Assessment of Hazards, n.d.). The total number of people affected
1 In the aftermath of disasters, asset bubbles can be created whereby the cost of goods and services are
rapidly inflated due to demand generated by aid influx. Such assets could include e.g. catering and accom-
modation, office space, interpreters, drivers and labourers, construction materials and machinery or water.
Where local economies rely on sectors significantly affected by the disaster such as tourism, farming or
fisheries, and piecemeal own account working is common dependence on the disaster economy is likely
to be higher. This means that when demand contracts and asset prices fall, or the bubble bursts, the local
economy could end up worse off than before the disaster.
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by Typhoon Yolanda, in relation to their livelihood, environmental and food security, was
approximately 16 million. The livelihoods of 5.9 million people were ‘destroyed, lost or
disrupted’ (OCHA/UNEP 2014: 5) by Typhoon Yolanda.
Building on the earlier work of Cannon etal. (2003), we argue that post-disaster liveli-
hood strategies that are informed by a central reference point of vulnerability (during the
‘ordinary’ times) could help build more resilient futures. We argue that ex ante livelihood
‘buffers’ (Marschke and Berkes 2006; Scoones 1998) could help reduce vulnerability and
that these buffers should be mainstreamed into disaster risk reduction (DRR). We have
chosen to focus on livelihood because this issue was central to the rehabilitation efforts
post-Typhoon Yolanda and is more broadly a key driver of sustainable post-disaster recov-
ery. In connection with the other related literature, livelihood is one of two (the other being
housing) aspects of recovery that ‘play a critical role in the perception of affected individu-
als about their general recovery after disasters’ (Taheri Tafti and Tomlinson 2015: 168).
The communities examined in this article are all located in the adjacent Local Govern-
ment Units (LGUs) of Palo, Tanauan and Tacloban City, in the Eastern Visayas region
(also known as Region VIII) of the Philippines. This region bore the brunt of Typhoon
Yolanda in November 2013. Governance in the Philippines is devolved through a system
of LGUs, namely provinces, cities, municipalities, and barangays (the smallest political-
administrative units) run by elected officials. LGUs have various powers that are devolved
from the national government under the 1991 Local Government Code (Brillantes 1998).
Palo is a third class municipality and Tanauan is designated second class; government clas-
sification is based on income. Tacloban is a highly urbanised city with a population of over
242,089 in 2015 (Philippines Statistics Authority 2016) and an annual income over 50 mil-
lion PHP (constant price using 1991 as base year).
The Visayas islands are home to some of the poorest provinces in the Philippines2. The
three areas were chosen as the focus of this study as they were at the centre of a mas-
sive and prolonged international relief effort. They are not conflict zones; however, many
coastal dwellers lived ‘close to the subsistence level and [were] thus structurally positioned
at the edge of socio-economic disaster’ (Siar 2003: 272). In this case, socio-economic dis-
aster was triggered by a ‘natural disaster’, Typhoon Yolanda. An assessment of the extent
to which relief strategies reduced or increased vulnerability via livelihood, is one useful
way of testing whether disaster relief strategies really managed to foster resilience after
Typhoon Yolanda. As vulnerability is understood and experienced in many different ways,
this article draws on a wide range of primary survey and interview data gathered in our
chosen communities.
This article first outlines our data gathering strategies and elaborates on vulnerability
as a conceptual framework. We then summarise the different concepts such as livelihood,
resilience, disasters and vulnerability and their relation to each other. We argue that the
vulnerability experienced in relation to Typhoon Yolanda was, and continues to be, directly
linked to inadequate livelihood assets and opportunities. The next section examines the
pre-disaster vulnerability that existed during ‘ordinary’ conditions. This is followed by an
assessment of how post-disaster interventions during ‘extraordinary’ circumstances con-
tributed, or did not contribute, to resilience and lessening of vulnerability. The final section
2 A distinction can be made within the Visayas with Eastern, Northern and Western Samar provinces
recording higher poverty rates than Leyte (most number of poor families) and being in the top ten poorest
provinces of the Philippines together with Negros Oriental in 2012 (NAPC). However, in the first half of
2014, Eastern Visayas (Region VIII) became the poorest region in the country (NSCB 2015).
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summarises our findings and we conclude by cautioning against rehabilitation strategies
that knowingly or unknowingly, resurrect pre-disaster vulnerability. Strategies that foster
dependency, fail to appreciate local political or ecological conditions or undermine coop-
eration and cohesion in already vulnerable communities will be bound to fail.
2 Data gathering
In this article, we use a comparative and mixed methods approach using quantitative and
qualitative data. Evidence is drawn mostly from 20 barangays of comparable size across
three LGUs: eight in Tacloban City, six in Palo and six in Tanauan. The uneven sample
size across the LGUs relates to the differing size, and hence number of barangays, within
each LGU. Assessing post-disaster activity across space at the barangay level allowed us to
compare what strategies worked better or worse in similarly impacted, but different, locali-
ties in terms of post-disaster resilience building. This is important as community resilience
building is best understood from the bottom up in order to avoid ‘disaster management
interventions [that] have a propensity to follow a paternalistic mode that can lead to the
skewing of activities towards supply rather than demand’ (Manyena 2006: 438).
Coastal geography alone dictated our choice of barangays3, and we had no prior
assumptions about the degree of social cohesion or effective leadership and capacity build-
ing within each barangay. This paper is based on the premise that there was great value in
information drawn directly from local ‘communities’ that had lived experience of the dis-
aster and its aftermath. We treat communities as being a group of people living within the
geographically and politically defined area of a barangay. These communities are linked
by family ties and embedded interaction between neighbours, especially where popula-
tions are stable. However, such communities do not operate in isolation. Networks of social
interaction and joint action that impacted upon these communities operated at a number of
levels including locally, nationally and internationally. The idea of community is important
as without ‘community participation, disaster relief often inadvertently rebuilds […] struc-
tures of vulnerability’ (Bhatt and Reynolds 2012: 74).
Vulnerability is a material and social condition and, to a certain extent, subjective.
Therefore, we aimed to gather a broad range of data on the material and social experience
of rehabilitation as systematically as possible. We interviewed a sample of the population
large enough to allow for the cross-checking of responses and conducted about 800 house-
hold surveys annually in 2015, 2016 and 2017. This allowed us to identify general trends
in how the rehabilitation efforts were perceived and experienced across time and space
and teased out the nuances of power relations between the different stakeholders. The data
cited in this paper refers only to the survey responses that directly address livelihood. We
instructed our fieldworkers to survey an equal balance of men and women; nevertheless,
our respondents were predominately female: 61 per cent in 2015, 74.7 per cent in 2016
and 75 per cent in 2017. As our surveys were conducted during daylight hours this gender
imbalance was indicative that it was predominantly women who were at home during the
working day.
Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with a range of governmental and non-
governmental stakeholders over 4 years from 2014 to 2018. We interviewed each barangay
3 The barangays chosen were: Tacloban: Barangays 54, 54-A, 66-A, 67, 87, 88, 89, and Abucay (least
affected); Palo: Cavite, Cogon, Libertad (least affected), Pawing, Salvacion, and San Joaquin; and Tanauan:
Bislig, Calogcog, Salvador (least affected), San Roque, Sta. Cruz, and Sto. Niño.
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captain (or representative) and mayor annually for the duration of our project. Twenty-four
focus group discussions with various sectors including women, the elderly, youth, persons
with disabilities and mixed groups, across the three LGUs were held over 3 years. We also
identified two families in each barangay, one most affected and one least affected, that were
willing to be interviewed year on year. By selecting 20 most affected and 20 least affected
families, we aimed to establish the factors that helped or hindered disaster recovery given
their similar but perhaps different experiences. We asked every family the same questions.
By interviewing 40 families in a semi-structured and systematic fashion, we aimed to go
beyond mere anecdotal evidence.
The virtue of gathering evidence over time is that we were able to monitor first-hand
the extent to which relief operations ameliorated the vulnerability of communities beyond
the initial emergency phase. We were able to go back to the same communities and the
same respondents to see whether their situation had improved or changed and what the
primary obstacles were to their rehabilitation. We were also able to observe the shift in
activity when many international aid agencies left and tease out the sustainability of these
livelihood strategies in both extraordinary and ordinary conditions. The production of both
quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data allowed us to compare quantitative
trends with rich empirical data from interviews. Gathering data from a range of stakehold-
ers allowed us to assess how livelihood strategies were both produced and applied and
to compare the stated aims and objectives of the strategies with how they were actually
experienced.
We also took note of the existing institutional governance structures. While the form
of government is unitary, devolution was established in the Philippines via the 1991 Local
Government Code (Republic Act No. 7160). The Code devolved wide-ranging responsi-
bilities to LGUs, including disaster response and management (Atienza etal. 2019). Fur-
thermore, the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010 (Repub-
lic Act No. 10121), in setting up the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management
Framework as well as the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council
(NDRRMC), puts in the frontline both the national government and LGUs (Eadie 2019:
93–94). LGUs are mandated to have their own local DRRM budgets, plans, and offices.
The national DRRM framework also enables various government agencies at various levels
not only to coordinate with each other but with civil society organizations as well as inter-
national and foreign bilateral agencies.
A consideration of the prevailing governance structures helps us to assess some of the
institutional factors that affected the sustainability of the livelihood strategies introduced in
the three areas that we studied. It is also useful to reflect on whether there were problems
with the governance structures themselves or only in policy implementation.
3 Resilience, livelihood, disaster andvulnerability
Resilience has been debated across disciplines in physical/material and social terms.4 The
word resilience is derived from the Latin word resilio meaning to leap or spring back. It
can be defined as ‘the capacity of any entity—an individual, a community, an organisa-
tion, of a natural system—to prepare for disruptions, to recover from shocks and stresses,
4 For conceptual overviews of the term resilience as they relate to disaster relief see: Alexander (2013),
Cote and Nightingale (2012), Manyena (2006) and Mitchell and Harris (2012), Weichselgartner and Kel-
man (2014).
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and to adapt and grow from a disruptive experience’ (Rodin 2015: 3). Resilience does not
just relate to the ability to deflect and counter threats; it is also about physical and social
adaptation. Therefore, resilience can be equated to capabilities. Ideally survivors should
have the capabilities to reduce their own vulnerability and work towards a resilient future.
Resilience may be subjective and ‘comparable disasters could generate quite different artic-
ulations of resilience from similarly affected communities’ (Eadie 2019: 98). Vulnerability
and resilience can also coexist. From the outside, vulnerable communities may look like
their ability to take action is constrained but the various hardships faced on a daily basis
can mean that resilience is inbuilt. People are used to coping with living in close proximity
to each other, economic stress and environmental threats. Therefore, coping strategies and
‘psychological resilience’ (Usamah etal. 2014: 187) are quickly activated during disasters.
Livelihood, as a means of resilience, needs to be understood in a framework of changing
social, political, economic and environmental contexts (Davidson-Hunt and Berkes 2003;
de Haan and Zoomers 2005; Delisle and Turner 2016). Indeed, the notion of livelihood
itself should be seen in context: ‘livelihood is a larger, more universal and more useful
concept for seeing what best to do, encompassing as it does for many of the poor so much
more than the employment of a job, which for many is not and cannot be a reality’ (Cham-
bers 1995: 183). Livelihood is not just a salary or a job; it is about the various ways that
individuals and communities sustain themselves. Livelihood is commonly defined as, ‘the
capabilities, assets (both natural and social) and activities required for a means of living: a
livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks, main-
tain or enhance capabilities and assets, both now and in the future, while not undermining
the natural resource base’ (Chambers and Conway 1992: 7).
Livelihood is socially and ecologically situated. How intangible assets such as skills and
social support, and tangible assets such as finance and ecological resources are accessed is
an important determinant of livelihood (Bebbington 1999; Sok and Xu 2015). Many of the
world’s poor secure a living via the creation of multiple strategies that cannot be quantified
on the basis of income alone. The poor exist in conditions that are ‘local, complex, diverse
and dynamic’ (Chambers 1995: 173) and inevitably impact on the lived experience of the
search for livelihood.
Livelihood decisions may involve meeting immediate needs even if this increases
future vulnerability, e.g. going into debt, skipping education to go to work or engaging
in unhealthy or dangerous work. These trade-offs have to be seen within the context that
they are made and how people rationalise their own circumstances, ‘the constraints under
which they make these decisions and the power relations at play’ (Bebbington 1999: 2033).
Wealth, access to credit and productive assets such as land (Borras and Franco 2005), insti-
tutional policy (Scoones 2009: 176–183), human ingenuity, skills, training, equipment
and social networks are important capability indicators. Issues such as gender (Angeles
and Hill 2009; Gaillard etal. 2015; Siar 2003), disability (Tabuga and Mina 2011; Yama-
gata 2015), culture and social norms can also dictate how livelihood assets are accessed
and utilised. The livelihood opportunities of women may be compromised because they
are expected to take on unpaid care work that impact on their ‘share in the distribution
of resources post-disaster because their productive and reproductive contributions remain
undervalued, uncounted and unpaid’ (Tanyag 2018: 566). These issues present us with a
set of complex indicators that are not always easy to measure, isolate or replicate.
Livelihood activities play out in different ways in different places. Rural livelihoods are
likely to involve a combination of ‘different activities in a complex bricolage or portfolio
of activities’ (Scoones 2009: 172) that are closely connected to the natural environment
and the rhythm of the seasons. However, the focus on capabilities and assets in relation to
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shocks and stresses also translates to the urban environment. The variables that affect rural
dwellers such as access to land, the depletion of open access resources such as fisheries,
shelter and credit, skills and training and a government that can be held to account for the
well-being of the population play out in different ways in the urban context, but they are
still relevant.
In relation to shocks and stress Ian Scoones suggests that livelihood ‘buffers’ can be
created if (a) livelihood resources are kept in reserve, (b) single and multiple livelihood
activities can be diversified and realigned so that if a particular activity or complementary
set of activities come under threat, alternative livelihood options are still available, (c) risk
to livelihood is ‘pooled’ so the threats are minimised, and (d) resilient systems are built so
that shocks and stresses have less impact (Scoones 1998: 10). These strategies are laudable
in relation to building sustainable livelihoods; however, such interventions are seldom easy
in poor communities that may be functioning at a bare level of existence. Nevertheless,
they are sound benchmarks against which vulnerability can be measured.
Such buffers are particularly important in areas prone to disasters and ‘sustainable live-
lihood’ approaches can provide a valuable opportunity for combining disaster reduction
and development interventions in one unifying approach’ (Sanderson 2000: 51). Sustain-
able livelihood approaches have typically focused on how human, social, physical, natu-
ral and financial capital can be ‘assessed in terms of their vulnerability to shocks and the
institutional context in which they exist’ (Morse and MacNamara 2013: 19). For livelihood
to be resilient, it should be adaptable in the face of adverse conditions, and if necessary be
realigned or reinvented ex post in the face of sometimes drastically altered socio-economic
or ecological realities. Careful attention to the capabilities and assets could help ameliorate
future vulnerability and aid disaster recovery.
The United Nations (UN) defines disasters as ‘a serious disruption of the functioning of
a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmen-
tal losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to
cope with its own resources’ (UNISDR 2009: 9). Environmental events, such as typhoons
or earthquakes, are only classed as disasters when populations are seriously overwhelmed
by the impact. The social aspect of disasters is a common but important theme in disas-
ter research. Wisner etal. acknowledge that disasters are products ‘of social, political and
economic environments because of the way these structure the lives of different groups
of people’ (2004: 4). The nature of this interplay is complex, contested and varies widely
across time and space, meaning that ‘disasters cannot be understood to be “natural” in
any straightforward way’ (Wisner etal. 2004: 9). Meanwhile, Daniel P. Aldrich highlights
social systems and resources that are overwhelmed by disaster. Aldrich defines disasters
as ‘event[s] that suspend normal activities and threatens or cause severe, community wide
damage’ (2012: 3). The use of the word community is notable as disaster is seen to impact
on some sort of collective that is not necessarily the state.
Disasters often have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable populations and ‘dis-
asters occur when natural hazards and human vulnerabilities interact’ (Bacon 2014: 23).
Vulnerability to disasters is heightened by poverty and measures to mitigate and prevent
disasters that ignore ‘underlying, hazard independent structural constraints’ (Gaillard etal.
2009: 126), inevitably ending up treating the symptoms, as opposed to the root causes of
vulnerability. Omar D. Cardona defines vulnerability as ‘the physical, economic, political
or social susceptibility or predisposition of a community to damage’ (2004: 37). Mean-
while, Bankoff argues that ‘vulnerable populations are created by particular social systems
in which the state apportions risk unevenly amongst its citizens’ (2003: 12). Not all poor
people are at risk from disasters. Nevertheless, those who live in fragile housing in exposed
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localities or risky locations and lack access to financial or material safety nets (in other
words buffers) are particularly vulnerable to calamities.
Indeed, as indicated by Rigg etal., ‘natural events may appear cruelly random but their
impacts, who they affect and how, the degree of resilience that societies and individuals
exhibit, and the trajectories of recovery, are far from random’ (2008: 138). As we can see
from the above, there is consensus that vulnerability is socially determined. For this rea-
son, an approach to disasters that focuses on vulnerability and widens the discussion to
‘consider context, human rights and security more generally’ (Brown and Westaway 2011:
333) is of value. For without social change, pre-existing vulnerability is likely to prevail in
the aftermath of a disaster. This indicates that to devise sustainable livelihood in ‘extraor-
dinary’ times in the aftermath of disasters, we need to re-evaluate the social injustice and
vulnerability in the pre-disaster moments, i.e. the ordinary times.
This means getting ‘back to normal’ after a disaster is both a moving target and not nec-
essarily an ideal state of affairs (Kelman etal. 2016: S137–S138). This is especially crucial
when extreme weather events are arguably the new normal (Mondragon 2015; David etal.
2013; IPCC 2018) in countries where hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons or drought and
high temperatures already appear with seasonal regularity. As such livelihood strategies
need to be sustainable in environmental as well as socio-economic terms. There is also a
tension between the need to devise sustainable livelihood strategies that ameliorate imme-
diate and local shocks and stresses with the bigger picture of climate change. Thus far the
literature on mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) and devel-
opment has tended to focus broadly on agriculture (Trujillo and Bass 2015), the physical
environment (Chmutina and Bosher 2015; Wamsler 2006), governance (Tanner etal. 2019)
and gender (Ginige etal. 2009; Khoza etal. 2019; Yumarni and Amaratunga 2018). A spe-
cific focus on the complexity of sustainable livelihood in both the ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraor-
dinary’ is lacking. This is where this article will turn to next.
4 Pre‑disaster livelihood vulnerability (ordinary conditions)
One day before Yolanda, on 7 November 2013, barangay captains and local govern-
ment officials were tasked with encouraging people to go to designated evacuation cen-
tres or higher ground in anticipation of the coming super typhoon. National government
leaders and agencies, through television and radio, warned of the strength of the coming
typhoon. Key informants noted that while some followed the warning and evacuated, oth-
ers remained or decided to stay at home to guard their property. Despite the vulnerability
of their housing and coastal location, poor householders chose to stay put in the face of an
impending disaster in order to safeguard their scarce possessions, which represented ‘their
life’s work and sacrifices’ (Dalisay and de Guzman 2016: 708–709). The coping strategies
for many of the poor when warned of the imminent danger of a major typhoon was for the
women and young children to evacuate to storm shelters whilst the men and older boys
stay put and guard their houses and scarce possessions. This meant many of the men and
older boys perished in the typhoon. This was evidenced by Bernardita Valenzuela,5 Head
of Tacloban City Information Office and executive assistant to Mayor Alfred Romualdez,
who described trying to convince a family to leave:
5 Interview, November 11, 2015.
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I asked a fisher family to leave and said that the mayor has sent vehicles for them to
go to the evacuation centre. The head of family responded, “Ma’am I cannot leave
my house, my belongings and my pig”. His pig is his means of livelihood […] “What
is the use of my life if I have no roof over my head and no food to put on the table for
my family?” He said, “don’t get angry Ma’am you bring my wife and my daughters”
[…] He and his sons, they were all washed away (Valenzuela 2015).
People also refused to leave because they underestimated the impact of Yolanda. This led
to the high casualty rate. We heard the phrase ‘We were used to typhoons, but we did not
expect the storm surge’ repeatedly. A combination of past experience and the perceived
importance of safeguarding livelihood assets and material goods meant that vulnerable
householders were prepared to engage in ‘risky’ behaviour in the face of an incoming
disaster. The ‘buffers’ discussed earlier in this article were either weak or absent in some
cases. Even though the family above engaged in both fishing and raising a pig, the loss of
the pig would have equated to the loss of a significant livelihood asset. In Region VIII as a
whole, pre-Typhoon Yolanda (2012) statistics show that 24.9 per cent of the urban popula-
tion were living in poverty. However, the numbers were much higher for certain groups
e.g. 49.2 per cent of farmers, 46.4 per cent of fishermen and 40.4 per cent of self-employed
or unpaid family workers (Philippine Statistics Authority 2016: 2–15) meaning that these
groups were potentially more vulnerable to shocks and stresses. This gives credence to the
argument that ‘people and their vulnerability or resilience, instead of the physical implica-
tions of natural hazards, should be at the core of [disaster] analysis’ (Bambals 2015: 150).
Many people were vulnerable before Typhoon Yolanda and were subsequently left com-
pletely destitute in the aftermath of the disaster. Homes and possessions were swept away
and family members were lost. The loss of tangible assets such as land, equipment (for
example, tools, boats), livestock, crops and manpower from the household had a significant
effect on livelihood.
5 Post‑disaster livelihood interventions (extraordinary conditions)
USAID estimated that Typhoon Yolanda affected the income stream of 5.9 million, work-
ers ‘as a result of infrastructure damage, lack of access to markets, and disrupted cash
flow’ (USAID 2014: 2). Of those 5.9 million ‘44 per cent (2.6 million) of those affected
were engaged in vulnerable employment as own account or contributing family workers
with limited income and social security prior to the disaster’ (ILO 2015: 11). ‘Vulnerable
employees’, that is the self-employed who are directly dependent on the profit made from
the goods and services produced, are most exposed to sudden and hurtful disruptions to
livelihood.
Employment figures in the aftermath of Yolanda remained steady, most likely because
of the multiple livelihood programmes available and the opportunities that came with the
post-typhoon reconstruction fuelled economic boom. However, 47.7 per cent in 2013 and
50.4 per cent in 2014 of those classed as employed were working less than 40h a week
(Philippine Statistics Authority 2016b: 11.3) meaning that the line between employed
and underemployed6 was perhaps questionable. Please see the table below for a list of
6 Underemployment is when a person is employed but his/her labour is underutilized in terms of hours
worked, skills used and compensation paid.
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livelihood initiatives mentioned by our informants. The list is non-exhaustive but gives an
idea of the kinds of programmes offered by government and other agencies in operation
post Yolanda (Table1).
Table 1 Livelihood Initiatives by Donor
Name of organisation Initiative
Dept. of Social Welfare and Development’s
(DSWD) Sustainable Livelihood Program
(SLP)
Livelihood Assistance Grants (LAG); Cash for Building
Livelihood Assets (CBLA); KALAHI-CIDDS Com-
munity Driven Development Project
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources
(BFAR), Department of Agriculture
Fishing Boats
WedPro Livelihood programme
Dept. of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Cash for work; Livelihood assistance including handi-
crafts, fishing and farming
CONCERN/CECI Fisheries
Environmental Rehabilitation projects
ACF Livelihood for fisherfolk
Unconditional Cash Transfer
Oxfam Fishing Boats
Seaweed farming
Rice Seeds
Dept. of interior and local governments (DENR) Fishing Boats
Ecotourism
US government/USAID Livelihood programmes, sari-sari stores
Worldfish Aquaculture training
Milkfish production
Tilapia production
Catholic Relief Services Livelihood relief packages for farmers
Tzu Chi Cash for work
UNDP Cash for work
Livelihood Diversification training
Fig. 1 Rate of unemployment based on authors’ survey data. [For full survey results see (Berja 2015)]
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Despite the relatively healthy employment figures detailed above, the predominantly
female respondents in the barangays under investigation gave far higher rates of unemploy-
ment and underemployment than the official averages for Region VIII. As evidenced in the
chart below (Fig.1).
These figures are perhaps indicative that the region wide averages masked significant
pockets of unemployment in the most vulnerable communities.
During our first survey round in 2015, 91.2 per cent of our survey respondents indicated
that Typhoon Yolanda affected their livelihood. In 2016, 50 per cent reported that sourc-
ing livelihood was more difficult in the time period since Yolanda and by 2017 this had
dropped to 38 per cent. But despite this improvement over time 76 per cent in 2015, 82 per
cent in 2016 and 83 per cent in 2017 reported that they had received no livelihood assis-
tance or training. Before Typhoon Yolanda, most residents in the areas under investigation
were engaged in the manufacturing and services sector, such as working in factories, and
as sellers and traders and other labour-based jobs. However, less than half of our survey
respondents living below the poverty threshold relied on salaries for their income, 33.2 per
cent ran small businesses, 4.3 per cent received financial assistance of some sort, 1.9 per
cent lived off a pension with 18.3 per cent citing ‘other’ sources of income. The diversity
of activity reported as ‘livelihood’ reinforces the validity of Chambers’ claim (1995: 191)
that livelihood is a much more meaningful term than employment when capturing how
people make a living. According to Chambers, ‘on livelihood, the strategies of the poor are
usually diverse and often complex’ (1995: 192). Consequently, the measurement of mon-
etary income as a determinant of sustainable livelihood may be problematic as income may
be fluctuating, fragmented and fail to capture other forms of material exchange. The high
level of non-salary income amongst the poor is also indicative that livelihood schemes and
entrepreneurial training are extremely important. Our interviewees repeatedly cited lack of
livelihood as a source of vulnerability for Yolanda survivors.
5.1 Aid allocation
In the mid-term recovery phase numerous agencies handed out free cash without any need
to contribute labour to the projects. This created a competition between the different aid
agencies and within communities, as people naturally took the free cash rather than work
for it. Free cash can also create a dependency mentality, as people begin to rely on further
donations to sustain them. In the longer term, vulnerability cannot be countered by dole
outs. It is, therefore, important that aid enables survivors the freedom to pursue efficient,
contextually appropriate and sustainable livelihood strategies. In other words, after the ini-
tial emergency phase, government agencies and aid agencies should focus on capability
building and the building of ‘livelihood’ buffers in order to minimise risk, stabilise liveli-
hood and reduce vulnerability. The failure to diversify was evident in relation to fisheries
and coconut farming as detailed below.
Typhoon Yolanda directly affected 39,000 fisher families. Multiplier effects meant
that up to 400,000 people, whose livelihoods were indirectly related to fisheries, were
affected (ReliefWeb 2014: 15). The Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC) organ-
ised a mechanism to monitor the distribution of clearly needed boats. However, we found
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numerous examples of duplicated aid. Fishermen were favoured recipients of equipment
and aid but in some cases individual fisherman received up to three boats (with others not
receiving even one), by different donors.7 This is because boat donations make good head-
lines and positive public relations for the donor agencies, which could encourage more
donations to that particular agency. Poorly planned over-generosity often results in greater
competition among the fisherfolk, as boats were also given to non-fishers. The increase
in fishing activity depletes the fishery resources and threatens the sustainability of liveli-
hoods. Alternatively, boats are accepted but lie unused and are simply a waste of much-
needed resources.
Many of our interviewees also indicated that there were sectoral preferences on helping
fishermen, but very little on farmers, factory workers and people working in the informal
sector. The government has come under criticism as farming programs ‘do not necessarily
address the issue of agriculture backwardness and underdevelopment that should be the
priority of action’ (IBON 2016); in other words, the overarching social order remains the
same and farmers remain vulnerable. Most farmers affected by Yolanda rely on coconut
farming for their livelihood, but most of the trees were destroyed by the storm and it will
take several years for coconut seedlings to grow full-term. However, coco farmers received
scant assistance. According to some of our informants, farmers need support for alterna-
tive crops suitable for the area, alternative livelihoods, as well as support for irrigation and
cooperative building. Without this support, farmers are trapped in a cycle of insecurity as
they lack the freedom or capacity to build sustainable livelihood solutions.
5.2 Gender andlivelihood
Another phenomenon in evidence was that many livelihood options are gender-biased. As
evidenced above, livelihood programmes tend to focus on the rehabilitation of fisherfolks,
who are usually men. Darina Romero, barangay captain of Barangay Libertad in Palo8,
explained that the women in her community:
Want to do a lot more, to bring in income and also make life easier for our com-
munity. We would be grateful if there are some kind of livelihood options available
to us, such as an investment to buy an oven so we can start a bakery cooperative, or
a weaving cooperative, so we can weave and watch over our kids, and make money
at the same time [….] I have asked the government again and again but there are no
available funds.
There were some international organisations and donors, such as the International Labour
Organisation (ILO), the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and CARE that recognised
the specific impact of the disaster on women. 50 per cent of their efforts targeted female
worker beneficiaries with considerable success. Of the 3354 workers provided with decent
work by the ILO, 1536 were women (ILO 2014), while CARE have supported 60 women
entrepreneurs to build sustainable enterprises (CARE 2015). However, these examples are
few and far between. In Tacloban, the social arm of the Catholic Church has an ongoing
training program in dressmaking for women. In Sta. Cruz, Tanauan, the Japanese Inter-
national Cooperation Agency (JICA) is developing a milkfish (bangus) processing facility
7 Interviews with barangay captains in 2015.
8 Interview, 11 November 2016.
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that will be turned over to a women’s association. However, these programmes are selec-
tive and targeted, with very few beneficiaries.
We also found that the (re)creation of women focused sari-sari store entrepreneurial
activity met with mixed success. Sari-sari stores are small local stalls that sell a variety
of household goods. Typically, goods are sold in small units or sachets that are afford-
able to ‘micro consumers’ otherwise known as the ‘bottom of the pyramid market’ (Pra-
halad 2014: 6). Sari-sari store schemes were promoted by a number of donors including
USAID in partnership with Coca Cola and Procter and Gamble (US Embassy 2015). The
stores were lauded (Padua 2014) as a means to foster entrepreneurial spirit and were highly
desired as evidenced in our focus group discussions with women.
However, the sari-sari store initiatives suffered from a number of problems including
oversupply. In 2016, all of the barangay officials that we interviewed reported that the num-
ber of stores had increased substantially after Yolanda, typically a figure of 30 per cent
was cited. This meant that storeowners in poor communities were competing for limited
customers with low spending power. We also found that beneficiaries of the sari-sari store
schemes were sometimes out of their depth in their new role as ‘micro-entrepreneurs’.
Whilst business training was given, including by the local government, we were also told
of cases where beneficiaries could not afford to buy new stock after their start-up capital
ran out or they simply spent the money they were given on household expenditure9 and the
business subsequently collapsed. It seemed that sari-sari store ownership worked best with
experienced owners; those who had no experience of running a small business tended to
fare less well in some cases.
In a Typhoon Yolanda response review published in April 2014, women interview-
ees cited sustainable livelihood as a primary need (Sanderson and Willison 2014: 4). We
repeatedly heard calls for more women’s livelihood options during our interviews and
FGDs in all 3 years of our data gathering. It is vital to scale up women’s cooperative or
livelihood options and extend them to other regions, especially those that are more rural
and less accessible. It is also evident from the examples above that post-disaster livelihood
strategies must acknowledge women’s role as caregivers and make reasonable adjustments
that allow women to maximise their capabilities without compromising the care of their
families.
If governmental and non-governmental agencies fail to adapt their strategies to the
needs of women, or only pay lip service to gender based issues, they are discriminating
against an already vulnerable group and reinforcing the social structure in ordinary times.
This has a knock-on effect to the wider community as ‘the security of children and other
dependents is at risk when women’s own lives are insecure’ (Enarson 2014: 46). Even
agencies that are full of good intentions may inadvertently add to the insecurity of these
women if they do not take full account of their capabilities and commitments, such as their
dual roles as workers and family caregivers. As mentioned in the opening paragraphs of
this article age, gender, disability, sexuality, ethnic difference, locality and levels of wealth
all contribute to how vulnerability and insecurity is experienced. Livelihood assistance that
fails to adequately account for the practical limitations of certain groups will fail. Focus
group discussions indicated that survivors with complex needs, such as women with chil-
dren with disabilities, found it extremely difficult to juggle their caring responsibilities
with the training and livelihood options offered by relief agencies. Sustainable livelihood
9 Interview, Tacloban Vice Mayor Jerry Yaokasin (2017).
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strategies have to take account of complex needs, cannot be gender blind and have to be
built from the bottom up.
6 Livelihood: asustainable rebuilding?
The communities assessed in this article were still undergoing rehabilitation and rebuilding
more than 6 years after Typhoon Yolanda. In the aftermath of Yolanda, INGOs and NGOs
were extremely active, but by November 2016, only four to five international organisations/
NGOs were still active. A lack of sustainable livelihood, inadequate and unsafe housing,
the inadequate provision of utilities such as water and electricity and incomplete infrastruc-
tures such as roads and drainage in the resettlement areas continue to threaten human secu-
rity. Livelihood opportunities in the resettlement sites, situated mostly away from original
areas of residence and work, are generally inadequate and based on micro-entrepreneur-
ial schemes such as food vending, sari-sari stores, and manicure and pedicure treatments.
Whilst efforts were made to monitor the viability of these businesses (Roca 2017), intense
competition, a lack of economies of scale and low profit margins has led to a bare level of
subsistence. Some traditional household livelihood strategies such as the raising of pigs
were banned in the resettlements, thus depriving households of a much-needed source of
income. We observed schemes such as quail egg production, funded by Operation Bless-
ing, fail over the course of our visits to the communities due to lack of demand. Conse-
quently, people are travelling back to their original places of residence in unsafe areas to
engage in their former occupations.
The withdrawal of many aid agencies left people worse off than before as the drying up
of material provision and livelihood options coincided with their exit. The sheer volume of
aid created by the extraordinary conditions that initially inundated Yolanda affected areas
contributed to a dependence mentality in various communities. Significant free handouts,
and a lack of other viable options created expectations of further assistance. Many of the
interviewees we spoke to were extremely concerned as rehabilitation processes were turned
over to the government, whom they considered to be the least active actor in the rehabilita-
tion process.
Government agencies are mandated by existing national laws and frameworks and help
rebuild local communities. However, work needs to be done on inter-agency and com-
munity coordination to enhance effective community rehabilitation. Agencies working in
the aftermath of any disaster should concern themselves with ‘the stability and security of
people’s capabilities’ (Gasper and Truong 2005: 377). New opportunities could be offered
to the survivors, capitalising on the resources and knowledge available within the region
and local communities. Social and material reconstruction could come about through new,
locally sensitive and more proactive ways of doing things.
Livelihood transformation programs that enable marginalized communities to reduce
vulnerability through stronger social resilience should be promoted. In many of the baran-
gays we visited, locals proposed livelihood alternatives that would actually be sustainable
even when external assistance stops. We heard suggestions utilising local resources that are
readily available in ordinary times, such as sand and cement factories, bakery and sewing
and other forms of cooperatives. We heard calls for gender focused livelihood programs.
However, the reality is that communities and individuals have little control over the crea-
tion of ‘buffers’ or the trajectory of their recovery, which are mostly initiated by external
stakeholders who are only privy to the ‘extraordinary’ conditions. This entrenches them in
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their marginalized position in society in the pre-disaster context. They remain vulnerable
and powerless and resilience remains an aspiration rather than a sustainable reality.
Thus, crucial in post-disaster livelihood recovery are DRRM plans prepared by national
and local governments, together with partner agencies and communities, which anticipate
possible losses and prepare for sustainable alternative livelihoods. In the three localities,
we investigated there were no comprehensive local DRRM plans, which were mandated by
law, before Typhoon Yolanda hit in 2013. In Tacloban, the city’s DRRM plan was only cre-
ated in 2016. In Palo, there was a draft DRRM plan in existence in 2013 but it was not yet
approved when Yolanda struck. Tanauan appeared to be the most advance in this respect,
as the municipality was the first local government to submit a recovery roadmap or plan
to the national government after Yolanda. But across all three locations plans were crafted
under ‘extra-ordinary’ circumstances. Overall national and local government agency data
and monitoring systems were inadequate and lacked systematic coordination with different
stakeholders. This led to duplication of aid, neglect of certain areas and sectors and waste
via oversupply in others.
To summarise, if livelihood is to be sustainable then it must enhance pre-disaster skills
and productive assets, be scaled up and the supply of goods produced must be linked to
market demand. This is why it is important that sustainable livelihoods should be crafted
for ‘ordinary’ (pre-disaster) rather than ‘extraordinary’ (post-disaster) conditions. Eco-
nomic booms based on the initial rehabilitation phase will inevitably collapse unless great
care is taken to foster longer-term demand for goods and services and the capability to
meet this demand. If local demand collapses or access to markets further afield is impracti-
cal then even initially functioning livelihood projects will be doomed to failure. For liveli-
hood strategies to be sustainable in the long run, they must be cognizant of ‘normal’ (or
ordinary) realities such as care giving duties, ease of access to the workplace, weak or cor-
rupt governance and exposure to flooding or drought. All these should be factored in local
DRRM plans that should anticipate future disasters.
7 Conclusion
Before Typhoon Yolanda, many of the population in Tacloban, Palo and Tanauan living
in low-lying coastal areas were vulnerable to inundation during typhoons (Lagmay etal.
2015). In some locations, this is still the case. Many residents in impoverished coastal
barangays lived on the shore, or even over, the water with houses supported by wooden or
bamboo stilts. The communities were chronically vulnerable to the elements. The capacity
to build buffers against shocks or stresses to livelihood or to diversify activity was some-
what limited in these communities. People did not have the freedom to move away from
the sea as land was scarce and livelihood opportunities were tied to proximity to the sea
and other nearby means of making a living. Meanwhile, attempts at diversification were
sometimes hindered by the inexperience of ‘micro-entrepreneurs’, intense competition over
limited local markets and the piecemeal relocation of communities to higher ground.
There needs to be a carefully managed transition between emergency cash for work or
cash for no work programs and diverse and sustainable livelihood building. Cosmetic post-
disaster relief strategies that result in similar or equal but different vulnerabilities do not
result in resilience. Similarly, the restoration of a pre-disaster status quo does not equate
to resilience if suboptimal pre-disaster socio-economic structures remain entrenched. Peo-
ple and communities remain vulnerable under such conditions as they cannot effectively
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mitigate the risks that they face. This vulnerability is experienced unevenly. Certain liveli-
hood sectors such as fishermen, farmers and own account workers; and certain demograph-
ics, such as women and the elderly, were particularly vulnerable.
The overarching objective of this article has been to critically assess the livelihood strat-
egies that were used to reduce individuals’ and communities’ vulnerability in the after-
math of Yolanda. It appears that despite the significant relief and rehabilitation effort in
the aftermath of the Typhoon Yolanda, individuals and communities in the areas we stud-
ied remain vulnerable. They are functioning, and people often see themselves as resilient.
However, they still face a range of obstacles that impede the building of buffers against
future shocks and stresses as most strategies are tailored in, and towards, ‘extraordinary’
conditions. Post-disaster livelihood assistance often failed to account for actual need, the
sustainability of projects, pre-existing skills sets or caregiving responsibilities. Complex
vulnerabilities experienced by women, the elderly, and those tasked with caring for people
with disabilities were often overlooked. Coordination mechanisms and legal frameworks
that should have anticipated these considerations were often either ignored or weakly
implemented. The local governments that were supposed to be at the frontline of DRRM
work were unprepared, overwhelmed, and caught off-guard by Yolanda and its aftermath.
It also appears that participatory mechanisms where substantial community inputs are con-
sidered, especially in livelihood plans, were lacking.
Overall resilience must be about bouncing ‘forward’ rather than bouncing ‘back’ to an
improved socio-economic normalcy, especially for the most vulnerable in society. For live-
lihood to be sustainable, we need to address pre-disaster social vulnerability entrenched
by multiple factors such as gender and other protected characteristics. Post-disaster resil-
ience can be meaningfully related to sustainable livelihood but bringing about change that
builds capacity and alleviates vulnerability is key. Across cases this could include a real-
istic examination of local environmental factors and natural resource dependence, culture
and the role of women, infrastructure and market access for locally produced goods and
services and the extent to which livelihood can be organised on a collective basis. Govern-
ment agencies and non-governmental organisations should also consider further the diverse
earning streams of the poor that can be adjusted to account for factors such as caregiving,
seasonal changes in the weather or market demand in holiday or celebration periods. We
observed strategies that neglected empowerment, capacity building and the importance of
giving voice to individuals and their communities, especially the most vulnerable ones. If
agency is to be effectively built, survivors should be helped to identify for themselves the
livelihood strategies that reduce vulnerability and help build secure futures.
Finally, in the future DRRM strategies need to mainstream sustainable livelihood into
development planning in ways that boost capabilities and reduce vulnerability. A system-
atic mapping of vulnerability, even before disaster strikes, with the participation of local
people and communities, could help aid agencies and governments identify policy short-
comings and become more reflective about what disaster relief could and should achieve,
particularly in building sustainable livelihoods.
Funding This research is funded by an ESRC/DFID Joint Fund Poverty Alleviation Grant (ES/M008932/1,
£347,000.00). Dr. Pauline Eadie is Primary Investigator and Prof. May Tan-Mullins (University of Not-
tingham, Ningbo) and Prof. Maria Ela Atienza (University of the Philippines Diliman) are Co-Investigators.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons
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licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are
included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the mate-
rial. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not per-
mitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/.
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