The full report can be found at www.OxfamAmerica.org/OneGulf.
On the eve of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the expected release of Sec. Ray Mabus’ Gulf Coast Recovery Plan, residents and advocates who have been responding to the disaster are calling for a recovery plan that addresses the core needs of those who have lived through both disasters and ensures that the status quo of degradation, inaction, and vulnerability is no longer be accepted.
“Gulf Coast citizens and community advocacy groups are more than just resilient, we are visionary,” said Derrick Evans, adviser to the Gulf Coast Fund for Ecological Health and Community Renewal and founder of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives. “After the hurricanes of 2005 and 2008, and the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster, we heed President Obama’s call to forge local experience and community wisdom into recommendations for the Administration’s regional recovery plan. Representatives from diverse groups across the gulf coast have responded by developing and endorsing these recommendations for community-led economic, environmental and social recovery”
Aaron Viles, Campaign Director for the Gulf Restoration Network, said the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is the best time for the nation to commit to the Gulf Coast.
“On the five year anniversary of Katrina and the devastating 2005 hurricane season it's well past time for the nation to commit to a true restoration vision and plan for the central Gulf, long the nation's energy sacrifice zone,” said Viles.
The report outlines key components for a successful recovery effort, including:
- The development of new livelihood opportunities through long-term federal investments in ecosystem restoration, climate adaptation and clean, renewable energy to build more resilient coastal communities;
- Ensuring that new jobs are decent jobs, avoiding “low-road” contracting practices and promoting sustainable jobs and working conditions;
- Supporting community-based scalable transitional workforce and enterprise development programs with successful track records;
- Ensuring any governance structure builds upon past planning and prioritizes community participation, accountability, transparency and streamlining of project implementation;
- And adequate funding is provided through proposals including eliminating tax loop holes, and tax deductions for oil spillers and directing these revenues along with federal fines and liabilities related to the BP Horizon Disaster towards a Gulf Coast Community Resiliency Fund.
These and other steps outlined in the report will help the region recover from yet another disaster. One of the Gulf’s greatest assets is the innovation and resourcefulness of its people. By far the most encouraging initiatives that arose in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were driven by citizens and nonprofits across the Gulf Coast and were aimed at helping promote community renewal and recovery. Projects helping communities reimagine their future, create jobs, start new social enterprises and rebuild their homes, and led by community and faith-based nonprofits, gave a glimpse of the promise of what communities could do with proper resources.
“First with Katrina and now with the BP oil spill, the recovery of the Gulf Coast has depended far too much on the resiliency of individuals and families in the region,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “Alongside community resolve to build back stronger, what is needed are appropriate private and public investments that reduce the vulnerability and create a roadmap to recovery. Communities are showing the way: it’s time for others to make their contributions count.”
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With the well site now capped, it is critical to address the disaster's short- and long-term challenges, as well as the historical problems it has intensified, with a plan that offers opportunity for the many people suffering economically, ensures that those affected have a voice, and recognizes the teachable moment from this disaster to catalyze a transition towards promoting investments and industries across the Gulf that build coastal community resiliency.
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“See, with a storm, (there’s) damage and you come back, you know,” Duncan said recently while mending a hole in one of his fishing nets in Venice, LA. “This here is different than a storm .First time we ever had something like this. (With a storm) if people lost their job and didn’t have their job, they come and fish. This here is the life of the people here, fishing. This is their lifeline here. A lot of people make their living and survive with their fishing.”
Duncan has spent the past five years trying to rebuild his life since Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana. And although the storm was severe, he suffered the most damage afterwards when a private company from New York, hired by the Coast Guard, came through Venice and began delivering on their mandate to lift swamped boats like Duncan’s from the water. Instead of cloth ties, the company used metal cables for the task, destroying the fiberglass hull on Duncan’s boat and dozens of others—before the Coast Guard could stop it.
Now the fishermen on the Gulf Coast are getting hit again. Duncan has barely been able to get out to fish the areas he’s out on almost daily during this time of year. In a normal year he’d plan on fishing four months out of the year – and earning a year’s income in that time. Since the spill however, he’s already lost one month and expects to lose at least two more. With authorities opening and closing fishing areas on a case by case basis, he goes out when he can. Meanwhile, the bills pile up and he says, plainly, that he doesn’t know where he’s going to get the money to pay off the note on his boat. He hopes assistance will come from BP but hasn’t talked to any company representatives in the nearly two months since the spill. No one from the government has been by to offer their help either.
Much of the physical and financial help that arrived after Katrina never reached its intended targets. Many worry the same will happen again, with assistance going to those best prepared to navigate the complex levels of bureaucracy that come with a multi-billion dollar effort like the Road Home recovery program in Louisiana or now, the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster Victim Compensation Fund. In many cases, the most vulnerable people have the hardest time getting help.
“People in the Gulf Coast are famously resilient, but they are running out of options. The response is way too slow for people who depend on the gulf for their livelihoods,” said Minor Sinclair, director of Oxfam’s United States Regional Office. “It was true with Katrina and it’s true now---communities need to be part of the solution and part of making sure it never happens again.”
Oxfam is working to ensure the voices from those communities are heard, convening meetings with community members and state and federal officials along the coast, working to have Oxfam partners represented in the media coverage of this disaster, and bringing coastal residents to Washington, DC to testify before congress and meet with elected officials. While BP’s establishment of the $20-billion escrow account for those affected by the spill will help, there is for those affected by the spill, there is much work to be done to ensure that those funds actually make it to their intended recipients, unlike with previous recovery efforts, and that community voices are continually heard in the recovery process.
And while there is serious concern among those most directly affected by the disaster, there is still significant resolve to continue living their lives and come back from this as they have come back from so many disasters before.
“I think it’s serious what’s happening here,” said Duncan. “We don’t know the effect of this, nobody don’t know how long the effect is going to be. (But) whatever we got to do, we got to do.”
]]>Sharon Hanshaw, executive director of the Oxfam America partner organization Coastal Women for Change (CWC), has been working to help Biloxi residents prepare for hurricane season. Now, she says, many locals fear that they will no longer be able to earn a living from the Gulf waters—and in a city already battling poverty and the legacy of Hurricane Katrina, this could be one uncertainty too many.
“People are in panic mode,” says Hanshaw. “They’re worrying: ‘I might lose my job, I might lose my job.’ What does that do to you and your family?”
The oil spill threatens a region already hit hard by poverty and unemployment. The Oxfam-funded 2008 report Measure of America ranked Mississippi and other Gulf Coast states as the lowest in the country on educational attainment, life expectancy, and level of income.
Hanshaw estimates that at least 20 percent of people in her native East Biloxi rely on fishing and shrimping to support their families. Many more work in related industries, including restaurants, shipbuilding, and the city’s 11 seafood processing plants. “Fish and shrimp: that’s how we live,” she says.
With the oil spill approaching the Gulf Coast, “fishermen fear this could be the end of their career,” says Hanshaw. “They’re asking questions like, what kind of compensation can I receive? Can I still fish and be okay? How long, if the spill reaches land, will I be out of work?”
Though community members have attended three meetings with BP officials, Hanshaw notes that straight answers are in short supply. “We get emails from the Environmental Protection Agency, BP, local organizations, national organizations—all with different information. There’s not one email with the same stuff,” she says. “There’s a lot of unanswered [questions], uneasiness.”
Cultural and language barriers also add to a sense of exclusion and misinformation. “The Vietnamese-American community is the majority of fishermen here. It’s their livelihood,” says Hanshaw. But, she adds, many Vietnamese fishermen don’t have computers or internet access—and key resources, like the BP insurance claims phone line, don’t provide Vietnamese translators.
“In East Biloxi, the Vietnamese community was left out during the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina,” adds Hanshaw. “Many are afraid it will happen again.”
Memories of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are still fresh in Biloxi, where 52 people died and more than 5,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. With the start of hurricane season approaching on June 1, Hanshaw says many residents are worried about the next big storm.
Many in the low- and middle-income neighborhood of East Biloxi are still fighting what they see as an inequitable recovery process. Right now, Hanshaw’s group is protesting the closing of three local schools, including the historically African-American Nichols Elementary. School superintendent Dr. Paul Tisdale attributed the closings to budget cuts and poor enrollment, but Hanshaw sees post-Katrina displacement as the root of the issue.
“Instead of building back affordable houses as soon as they could, the municipality had developers from other cities build condos and casinos,” explains Hanshaw. As a result, many families were forced to move out of the area, while others displaced by the storm still haven’t returned.
“If they take the schools… the community as we know it is over. It’s gone,” says Hanshaw. “A lot of teachers’ jobs will be gone. And that’s very devastating for people.”
With all of this happening at once, it’s no wonder locals are feeling overwhelmed, she says. “Can you imagine the mental state of people—thinking about schools, BP oil, and hurricane season, all in a couple of weeks?”
This month, CWC is partnering with another local group, Gulf Coast Restoration, to distribute a fact sheet about the oil spill in English and Vietnamese. “The fact sheet will tell you what you really need to know, how to prepare yourself. If you have an [insurance] claim, this is the number that you need,” says Hanshaw.
CWC volunteers plan to hand-distribute the fact sheets to peoples’ homes. “Not everyone has a computer, so [we make] phone calls and knock on doors,” she says. “You have to talk to people face to face, get them on the same page. Don’t assume everybody got the memo.”
Hanshaw is inviting her neighbors to attend a training session on advocacy, where they’ll learn how to make their voices heard both locally and in Washington, DC. Her group will also continue their core work on hurricane preparedness through a series of workshops, where locals learn how to assemble preparedness kits and create evacuation plans.
“Now we have to address the spill too, because that’s a form of preparedness also,” she says. “We want to help people understand that this is big. We have to get ready. And we don’t know what’s going to happen. We just don’t know.”
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Keep this guide handy as you read the paper or watch the news. In a glance, it will allow you to become a more active participant in your local, county, state or federal government. Inside, you will find contact information for the elected officials who represent the six counties of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, from the president down to your local city council member. A quick description of the purpose and function of the different branches and levels of government will make it easier to determine the best person to contact when an issue moves you to action. Colorful maps will help you locate your ward or legislative district, and photos of your elected officials will make their faces more familiar.
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But a hungry child exists in a larger context: if we nourish communities, they can nourish their own children.
The woman on our cover, Fatou Doumbia, and other women in her village in Mali, pooled their resources last year. They set aside nearly a ton of millet as a defense against the hunger they’d seen as food prices spiked. Hers is another face of hunger: determined, resourceful.
After the last harvest, Oxfam reached out to supporters to respond to the food crisis. We’ve devoted much of this issue to looking at what communities have done to avoid the kinds of hardships they confronted. When people living in poverty are hit by a food crisis or natural disaster, they lack resources to tide them over.
Oxfam works to help people build their resilience. Let respect and hope fuel your efforts to support women like Doumbia.
]]>Historically, studies about climate hazards and social vulnerability have been conducted in separate silos. The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) is the first study of its kind to examine both the potential impact of natural hazards and which populations are most likely to be negatively affected. The SoVI statistically examines the underlying social and demographic characteristics of the population and how they impact certain segments of the population in disabling ways when it comes to climate change-related hazards.
This research, commissioned by Oxfam America, includes a series of layered maps that depict social and climate change-related hazard vulnerability. The maps assist in identifying hotspots in the US Southeast, which are at significant risk in the face of four particular climate change-related hazards: drought, flooding, hurricane force winds, and sea-level rise.
The specific region of focus is the 13-state region of the US Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Roughly 80 percent of all US counties that experience persistent poverty (defined as a county in which at least 20 percent of the population experiences poverty for three decades or more) lie in this region.
For more details and to view interactive maps, visit oxfamamerica.org/adapt.
]]>"This study will be an especially useful tool to Louisiana legislators, activists and philanthropists because it provides an evidence-based portrait of living conditions in the state. It looks at our health, our education and our economic status, leading to important conclusions about how we must proceed to create a better Louisiana that is characterized by communities of opportunity," said Flozell Daniels Jr., President and CEO of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation. "The report makes it clear that we cannot forge ahead while leaving so many people behind. It is not only unjust; it is also ineffective."
"A Portrait of Louisiana" is the second state-specific report produced by the authors of The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009 since its release last summer. It applies the American Human Development Index—a single measure of well-being for all Americans based on indicators in three key areas: health, education and income—to life in Louisiana. Using U.S. government statistics on longevity, educational attainment and enrollment, and earnings, the American Human Development Report revealed where America is today and set a benchmark against which we will be able to assess where we are tomorrow. In countries around the world where similar studies have been done, Human Development Index findings have proven that strategic investments in health, education and employment boost people's well-being as well as national prosperity.
Some surprising findings of "A Portrait of Louisiana" include the following:
"This report explores actions needed to build an infrastructure of opportunity so that all in Louisiana can be productive citizens and reach their full potential," said Sarah Burd-Sharps, co-author of both this report and the American Human Development Report. "Doing so is critical to the economic growth and future competitiveness of Louisiana in the knowledge-based global marketplace of tomorrow," added co-author Kristen Lewis.
"In Louisiana, where we work with 16 state and local organizations such as the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, this report clearly illustrates the conditions residents were struggling with even prior to the hurricanes of 2005—limited access to education, lower incomes, and shorter lives—and argues for a comprehensive solution for recovery," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, which helped to fund the report with the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and the Foundation for the Mid-South. "And it comes at a crucial time, given the financial challenges facing the state and nation, to help policymakers prioritize how to use scarce funds."
"A Portrait of Louisiana," like the American Human Development Report, was published by the Social Science Research Council. Go to measureofamerica.org for the full text of the report and interactive maps of Louisiana.
]]>However, we must also soberly assess the challenges yet before Louisiana. This report paints an often troubling picture of long-standing human disparities, some of which have been exacerbated by natural/man-allowed disaster and the global economic crisis. The report's Human Development (HD) Index is a user-friendly method of comparing the condition of communities. This analysis has great potential to guide policy-making processes and to support data-driven thinking that moves beyond the assumptions of historical parochialism.
This report was developed by the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation (LDRF) in partnership with Oxfam America and other organizations committed to fully recovering the lives of Gulf Coast citizens.
]]>Much has been written about the relationship between African-Americans and Latinos and the tensions that arose when they were forced to compete for the same limited resources in a post-Katrina New Orleans. But little is known about what the two groups have in common—and how those shared experiences, attitudes, and goals could bring them together to help rebuild their community.
In late 2008, Oxfam America commissioned Bright Moments, who subcontracted with Dr. Silas Lee & Associates, to conduct a survey of the racial attitudes of African-Americans and Latinos living in New Orleans. "Building Common Ground" is a summary of those findings. The purpose of the survey was to measure how African-Americans and Latinos rated the quality of their lives, race relations with each other, experiences with discrimination, perceptions of each other, support for an African-American and Latino alliance, and effective strategies for such alliances.
The results reveal that the majority of African-Americans and Latinos agreed that they face similar issues of discrimination3 and agreed that it's important for their two groups to put aside their differences and work on overcoming those issues. It is on this common ground that we seek to build.
This publication is available in English and Spanish.
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