Standing Ground: The Politics of Land in Disaster Recovery

​Join us for the second event in our series on the Production of Disaster and Recovery in the Caribbean.

‍Disaster recovery plays out on unequal ground. Households with unclear or insecure land tenure situations are often more exposed to disaster events and frequently denied access to state recovery resources.These conditions emerge from longer histories of land administration that have been designed to legitimate private property and punish social relationships to land.

Under these land regimes, insecure households must justify a prescriptive claim to land over generations, but disaster events like Hurricane Melissa can disconnect them from their claim and deepen vulnerabilities.

The conversation focuses on the tension between disaster recovery and the persistent legacies of colonial land administration. It explores the potential of social tenure systems and the limitations of private property. The session asks how recovery might be organized in ways that protect residents rather than accelerate their removal.