Empowering Communities: A Bottom-Up Approach to Disaster Risk Reduction

Conventional, top-down approaches have dominated disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives for decades, with central governments coordinating disaster preparation and recovery efforts, fortifying coasts, and building large-scale gray infrastructure such as levees and seawalls to mitigate potential threats. Critics have questioned the usefulness and applicability of this strategy, especially given the mixed results from recent shocks, including Japan’s 3/11 triple disasters. To investigate the degree to which experts in the field embrace traditional or alternative DRR models, we conducted 15 in-depth interviews with DRR specialists from the U.S. and Japan and systematically coded their responses using the NVivo software. Three key themes emerged from our analysis: 1) Leveraging community-based DRR and addressing issues such as tokenism; 2) prioritizing support networks; and 3) harmonizing top-down and bottom-up structures where national planning and local efforts are synergized, and decision-making is conducted through multi-stakeholder participation. Our results suggest that top-down policies alone cannot control disaster response; rather, a more inclusive governance structure that makes use of both institutional capacity and local knowledge will enhance DRR moving forward.