Investigating the Practice of Disaster Risk Reduction Mainstreaming into Development : the Experience of a Development Organization

Sammanfattning: The understanding of development and disaster nexus has enforced the international community to think and act differently. Disaster risk reduction mainstreaming has been embraced as one of our best approach for sustainable development and has been consistently featured in international discussions. Mainstreaming in general is known to be a complex process requiring a set of institutional arrangements. The effort to mainstream disaster risk reduction is largely focused on the national government and sectoral issues. There is a gap of knowledge and understanding of how does a development organization experience and approach disaster risk reduction mainstreaming into their work, despite being a prominent actor in development initiative. This study attempts to fill this gap through a case study of World Vision Indonesia by investigating to the progress to disaster risk reduction mainstreaming. In doing so, this study applies a tool of mainstreaming disaster risk reduction for development organization focusing on six key areas: Policy, Strategy, Project Cycle Management, Geographical Planning, Relations and Institutional Capacity. The study relies on two combined data collection method; semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Results indicate that WVI’s progress to disaster risk reduction mainstreaming is varied across key areas. While there is a strong evidence of progressive advancement due to the strategic top-down approach, there is still room for improvement, in particular regarding the institutional capacity.