Bottom-Up Adaptive Social Protection: A Case Study of Self-Constructed Grassroots Attitude in the Post-Wenchuan Earthquake Recovery

Abstract

Current adaptive social protection programs and policies have been predominately designed from the organizational level, applied via a top-down trajectory, and are passively accepted by affected communities. While bottom-up grassroots interventions, providing their benefits, have rarely been encouraged in adaptive social protection programs nor complimented the related adaptive social protection policies. Based on a case study of the post-Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction and recovery in rural areas, this research qualitatively examines the broader range of benefits of self-built undertakings that support government-oriented adaptive social protection initiatives. These self-efforts have accomplished much more than the original adaptive social protection initiatives could have achieved. They not only provide the residents with safe, comfortable, and healthy places to live but also protect their traditional knowledge and skills, improve family relationships, and promote community cohesion. Thus, fundamentally supporting disaster survivors to rebuild their lives and livelihood and strengthen their resilience capacity. Although the uniqueness of the community-based environment limits self-reconstruction, this study argues that the self-reconstruction approach, as a community-driven strategy, encourages communities to develop their instruments, advancing current official adaptive social protection agendas. The bottom-up community-customized interventions will better serve disaster survivors to protect, promote, and transfer affected residents’ livelihoods and social relations; reduce their various vulnerabilities; ultimately build their resilience capacity to achieve the global priority of climate change adaptation and disaster reduction.